Worldwide Beekeeping
Beekeeping => Swarms, Cut Outs, Trap Outs and Bee Trees => Topic started by: Yankee11 on March 08, 2015, 10:49:57 pm
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I just watched a video and learned something interesting.
Say one of your hives swarms and the swarm lands in a tree by your bee yard. If you remove the queen from that swarm. That swarm will fly back the the original hive. This video shows the swarm. He catches the queen and puts her in a cage. Takes her away, then that swarm goes back and rejoins the original hive.
So if this happens, would this not save the honey crop from this hive? The parent hive would be at full strength with a new queen emerging.
Thoughts?
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Um, I had to read that last sentence a couple or so times, and then I got it... Doh!
I don't know how to figure the honey crop thing. But now that you mentioned it... Yeah! There would be a queen emerging in the parent hive for sure... (thinking)... so it would be okay if the swarm went back home WITHOUT their queen... (thinking)... and the plus of all the drones that left with the swarm... which would be more insurance of a good mating... (thinking) because the drones that left would not be related to the new emerging queen...
Good Question :eusa_think:
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For about 3 days, until one of the cells emerged. If the hive is overcrowded, they will swarm. That wouldn't stop them any more than removing queen cells does.
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No, the bees will leave with the first virgin to emerge. THEY still want to swarm, they swarmed for a reason, and it is often HARD to change their mind once they have made that choice. If there is only one virgin queen to emerge, the hive is left queenless.
LOL, Iddee posted just before I did
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Not sure about the drone part.
I am just thinking when a hive swarms, it will not make a honey crop. So, if you had that swarm go back to the original hive, that hive would still make honey cause they would be back at full strength.
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If you could keep them there it would.
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That's why I come hear with ideas or things I see.
So when the next queen hatched they would leave again when the virgin queen hatched, and she would go with them?
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Correct.
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And that would be secondary swarm or cast swarm...
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I maybe have a longer honey flow than the rest of you, but I get a honey crop even when they do swarm and even honey from the swarm so I do not see much of a change. I may would gotten a bigger honey crop from the hive if they didn't swarm but it has not been much bigger.
Ken
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I maybe have a longer honey flow than the rest of you, but I get a honey crop even when they do swarm and even honey from the swarm so I do not see much of a change. I may would gotten a bigger honey crop from the hive if they didn't swarm but it has not been much bigger.
Ken
Ken beat me to it as well. :D
You may lose some honey with a swarm but certainly not an entire crop.
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Take the swarm to another outyard and let nature do it's thing, then take the old queen put her and a frame or two of brood in a nuc (or do her in?) and combine the the swarm hive back on the mother hive, if you don't want more hives and a bigger honey crop. That is if it was a early swarm. JMHO. Jack
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Just to be contrary ;D
The hive swarms, you pinch the old queen, the swarm returns to the hive.
The FIRST virgin emerges and starts her mating flights. She is going to REPLACE the old queen.
If she kills all her sister queens. The hive can't cast anymore swarms. That's just a supersedure(?).
If the other queens are allowed to emerge.......bye. bye bees
Micheal Bush (on his website) explains a split with a recombine later, which sounds a lot safer.
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The FIRST virgin emerges and starts her mating flights. She is going to REPLACE the old queen.
She wont mate until they have found a permanent home in a different location. its not the queen that wants to swarm, its the bees. The bees stop feeding the queen so she can fly, they are the ones who make that decision, so doing in a queen, removing a queen etc.. changes nothing about what the bees want. Thats why they will swarm with the first Virgin, and why it is so difficult to convince them NOT to swarm once they have decided they were going to.
Removing the old queen and a few frames worth of bees is usually enough to convince the remaining bees that they swarmed, and they will return to work as usual.. Leaving enough bees to produce a good honey crop.
Now, waiting a few days, or even a couple weeks and returning the swarm to the hive via a newspaper combine, without the old queen may work.. but by then I have usually gotten the artificial swarm well started in a hive or nuc of their own.
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Perry,
My bad on the choice of words. (honey crop)
I meant just the honey production from that hive that swarmed. Not the whole honey crop :)