Demaree Help

[minz]

My bees are filling up the deeps and the mediums with necter and pollen, how can I get them to free up laying space? I have a ton of honey deeps from dead outs from the weekend and I really do not want to pull more honey deep frames.  I am certain that I will miss a QC and they will be in the trees eventually. I took down a QC in a nasty hive that was two deeps and a medium completely full of bees and bearding on the outside. I did not get all of the hives checked and now I am nervous if I should be tightening down my schedule.
I am checking them every 10 to 14 days. I take along 3 bottom boards and think poker has less dealing.
 If I scrape the capping off will they move the honey? What do you do with deep frames of pollen? I never figured I would be complaining about way too much honey and pollen.
I am checking them every 10 to 14 days. I take along 3 bottom boards and think poker has less dealing.

[iddee]

With the market at 125 to 150 for a 5 frame nuc, I know what I would be doing. I'd be headed for the bank with a wad of cash.

[LazyBkpr]

Minz;
   In swarm season I check every seven days. They can cap a queen cell and swarm in 9 days, so 10 to 14 is too long..  the inspections dont have to be deep, break the boxes and tip to look along the bottom edges of the frames for swarm cells..
   As Iddee said.. if the hive is strong pull a nuc from it, taking away a few frames of brood and bees is one of the best ways to turn them off of swarming. Give them empty foundation and employ the bees, give them something to do and keep their minds away from the promised land hive a half mile away.

[minz]

That is a nasty hive, so I have a ban on the QC from that one.  I have a pretty good feeling that the owners are going to ask me to move it here if they keep getting ‘head butted’ every time they try to use the rototiller. I do have a couple of more nice hives going the same way I will see if I have a couple of QC to drop into a nuc and pull bees for the mating nuc from the angry bird. That is the problem with getting spread apart too far.  The other decision is which yard to allow the mating flights from?
BTW I started putting up swarm traps and the nuc I had in the truck  had no close on the entry.

[riverbee]

oops minz, i was supposed to send you this info......my apologies.....

[pistolpete]

The Demaree method seems unnecessarily complicated to me.   A hive that is making preparations to swarm will almost certainly swarm.   Like you said: sooner or later you will miss a queen cell.   You can either do an artificial swarm, or make up 2 Nucs for sale.   For an artificial swarm, find the queen and remove her to another box along with a couple of frames of honey, bot no brood.   Also shake a great deal of bees into the "swarm" hive.  A lot of them will drift back.   The bees will think they have swarmed and raise a new queen.     To make up a couple of Nucs I just buy queens and give them 1 frame of honey, 1 frame of pollen, and 3 frames of brood with bees from the parent hive.   To me spending $25 on a queen and having a $150 Nuc to sell in a few days is sensible. 

[minz]

I was working off of the second one from the Netherlands.  I don’t know where the heck I got 10 to 14 days.  On both it said go for 7 to 10.  I would be pretty nervous but the one box I checked was way overrun with bees and I spotted the Queen. The top box only had one cell and Like I say she was too mean to breed.  The other yard I tried it on would be in jeopardy but it was really raining today and only hit about mid 50’s. I will check my math.  I have to admit it is a lot of work unless I am intending to make up queens and nucs.  I will throw a couple of queen castles in the truck in the morning and go pay a visit to the Estacada yard. Club has been selling nucs for $82 each here and really had the ads going and the big personal service thing.  In a month I may be able to sell some.  Commercial guy at the club has been selling doubles for $150.

[minz]

Update from Friday (since it looks like it did not post the first time). I checked the hives in Estacada and the hive to the west was text book.  They were drawing and filling the super, the top box had some QC (capped) that I found on 3 frames. I culled the QC to 2 max per frame and put 2 frames in each section of a 4 way Queen castle (4Q-C).  I moved off the bottom box and looked carefully at each frame before placing it in a new box.  I shook all bees off the frame to the lower hive to be certain that there was no queen on the frame.  Found the queen and placed her in the lower box.  I then shook a couple of frames of young bees to the 4Q-C. I replaced foundation and dead out frames to make up the 4 removed.
Second box I followed all the same steps but it was a different situation: all the QC were in the bottom.  I never did find the queen, but did have eggs and uncapped.  I may have gone a little light on the bees to the second section of the 4Q-C. I also may have made a mistake of shaking uncapped cells.  Time will tell.