Pulling the Queen to prevent swarm during a flow.

[Yankee11]

Sorry for all the questions all at ounce but I have been very busy in my yards.

We are in the middle of a very heavy flow and have had plenty of rain so I suspect it will continue for a while.
I have some hives that are really packed with bees and the queens are laying, laying, laying. Really to the point  I can't
give her more room. I have been shuffling frames and putting the empties in the middle of the the brood nest but there are no more empties.
 I don't know what's keeping them from going into swarm mode.

Should I think about pulling her and a couple frames of brood and letting them requeen during a flow or does stacking supers help to
get bees up out of the brood boxes.

[LazyBkpr]

Supers do move a few bees, and they give the bees a place to put the nectar that has been blocking up the brood nest, in effect opening it up a little. At some point, with a prolific queen they WILL over run the hive, and swarming will become the plan.
    No one talks about decapping brood frames, or freezing them, (messy, ugly option) but if you do NOT wish to expand, and have no place to put extra brood and bees it is an option that cant be overlooked.
   If you do want to expand andmake nuc's/hives then pulling the queen, brood/bees to start another hive or nuc is the way to go. Brood break while they make a queen, some decline while the queen is raised and honey put up rapidly as the amount of brood dwindles and more bees forage.
   Beware of waiting too long..  Once they hit swarm mode, they may take the first virgin queen that emerges and swarm with her, so doing this before they start swarm cells is a good idea.  Provided you CAN catch them before they start the swarm cells...

[Yankee11]

What about the die off rate of workers during a heavy flow?

Would I be risking the hive crashing pretty fast because of the die off.

I guess another option would be to just remove some brood frames and bees to lessen the congestion. They would probably pull a couple of foundation frames in a day or two right now.

I mean I looked at 10 frames yesterday in an upper deep and 9 of the 10 were brood/larva. And my goodness the bees. No swarm cups. Maybe the bottom deep was empty, I didn't look in it. But the bees were packed in the bottom deep.  I had about 3 like that.

I'm putting a 3rd super on these hives today. they have already filled 2 supers on each one.

[brooksbeefarm]

If you see the work force dwindling you can pull brood frames from the nuc you put the mother queen in to boost them up. Jack

[riverbee]

"Maybe the bottom deep was empty"

quite possible. if you have empty bottom deeps with bees crammed in the top, reverse them, then put your supers on or back on.

[DMLinton]

What about the die off rate of workers during a heavy flow?

Would I be risking the hive crashing pretty fast because of the die off.

Worker bee lifespan is inversely proportional to the amount of brood they are exposed to.  This is the difference between "Summer" bees and "Winter" bees.  Hence, it is unlikely that die off due to no queen during the flow would be significant.

[Woody Roberts]

I do this on a regular basis when the blackberries bloom with my older queens. It works great for preventing swarms. If timed right the bee will put up a lot of honey. However a lot of it will be in the brood chamber.

When the new queen starts laying they'll sometimes move some of it up but I usually just swap out a couple full frames with a hive that has not been so prolific.

This works best with drawn comb. My bees don't draw real well without a queen. Their also not as aggressive about collecting as a queen right hive.

The main flow here is not very long, about a month or so. I have no problem with diminishing numbers until the main flow is over.

This year I'm trying something different.
When I went in to harvest my extra queen cells I put a super between the two deeps. I'll move it back to the top about the time the queen starts laying. Hopefully they'll backfill the super and leave a little room in the brood nest.
I'll let youns know how it works out.

I've seen it speculated that they feed the brood 100 lbs of honey per month. In theory they should put on an extra 100 lbs. It hasn't worked that well for me though. I think the 100 lbs is a bit high.
They will make as much surplus honey as the queen right hive next to them even though most of it will be in the lower boxes.

In the end I will get some honey and an extra hive which doesn't always happen if they swarm.

This is one of those times that in theory practice and theory are one and the same. In practice though their different.

[Yankee11]

Woody, that's exactly what I am seeing.

It's in the hives I pulled the queens out of and they have filled the deeps with nectar. Now I have a new laying queen and I guess I will need to pull the nectar/honey frames out.

[Jen]

 Scott - ""No one talks about decapping brood frames, or freezing them, (messy, ugly option) but if you do NOT wish to expand, and have no place to put extra brood and bees it is an option that cant be overlooked.""

     I remember this subject coming up. I'm not thinking that I'll run into this situation this year, but I know that I only want three hives at the most. So how does this process work? do you decap the brood frame and then freeze it... or?

[LazyBkpr]

   Decapping is just what it sounds like. Pulling a frame of capped brood, and using your knife/hot knife to decap the entire frame. Then drop it back in where it was.
   The bees have a LOT of dead brood to clean up, and their future population just took a big hit.  Knowing that each full frame of capped brood is enough bees to cover two frames you can judge how many frames need to be decapped in order to stay even with the current population.
   Freezing is the way to do it for those who are a bit more squeemish...   freeze the frame overnight and put it back into the hive.  The bees have to uncap the cells as well as clean them for the queen to re lay..    Another frame or dozen would be helpful as you could just keep them in the freezer until they needed to be thawed for use.
   Population management if you have no place to transfer bees or brood

[Jen]

Sounds reasonable    Seems tho that decapping and putting the frame back in will hurry the cleaning process if the queen needs laying room quickly.

[pistolpete]

I pulled two of my queens at the start of the dandelion/fruit tree flow, about 3 weeks ago.  So far it has not proven productive.  one hive has absolutely nothing in the super and the other about 1/2 frame of nectar.  They've made quite a mess of filling the brood frames with honey and pollen though.   I'm quite looking forward to seeing how they'll fix that when the new queens start laying.

My best guess is I didn't let them get strong enough before  I pulled the queens and Nucs.   When I pulled the Nucs it left them with 6 to 8 frames for brood.  I think if I'd waited another 2 weeks and let them add another 3 frames of brood the results might have been different.

[apisbees]

Did you pull the queens and put them in nucs? or did you do a 50/50 split?

[DMLinton]

I wonder if some clarification might be in order.  Around here, the dandelion season is not the main flow but, essentially, the first nectar flow of the season with cherry and pear trees
blossoming soon after the start of the dandelions.  The dandelions are long gone when we get into the heaviest nectar flows.  Hence, in my area at least,, "the flow" and "the main flow" are very different creatures. 

I would never pull a queen on the dandelion flow looking for great honey production.  I think the it would have the opposite effect.

[GLOCK]

I pull all my queen when the time is right witch is right now in these parts  but the hive has to be booming and getting crowded and the MAIN flow is starting  if you get the timing right it works great  .
Last year was the first time I ever tried it and it worked great so I'm doing it again this year and I have pulled 6 queens out of my production hives so far so we will see how things go. Last year i got around 90 QTs of honey but it was my first year ever getting honey so i don't have any thing to go by.
I just set the nuc the queen is in  on the mother hive and if for some reason the hive does not requeen  i can just put the queen back works for me.

[pistolpete]

Apisbeees:  it was not a 50/50 split.  From my strongest hive I pulled 5 frames of brood, leaving them about 8.  From the second I pulled 3 frames of brood, leaving them with about 5 to 6 frames.  From my weakest hive I pulled 2 frames, leaving 4 frames of brood, but I also left them their queen.    I made up two 5 frame Nucs and two 4 frame Nucs.   I guess for me the addage "you can make bees or honey" worked out.  They will be strong in time for our peak honey flows at the end of June.