Swarm prevention methods

[pistolpete]

With the first swarms of the year already on the loose, I thought it might be time to have a thread dedicated to this topic.  Here are my thoughts on it:

I think that after integrated pest management, swarm prevention is the most important aspect of bee management.  Bees naturally want to swarm, it's necessary for the survival of the species under natural conditions.   Swarm prevention takes a decisive effort by the bee keeper to subvert the bees instinctive tendencies.    There are two broad categories of swarm prevention: proactive and reactive.  Proactive swarm prevention involves managing a colony in such a way that they will not want to swarm.  Reactive swarm prevention involves checking the colony every week during swarm season for swarm cells and doing an artificial swarm when swarm cells are found.

I implement proactive swarm prevention as follows:  I re-queen all of my hives every spring.  Young queens have very strong pheromones and that goes a long way to prevent swarming.  The one year old queens go into Nucs for sale or expansion.    I weaken each colony during peak swarm season by pulling Nucs from them.  This allows me to checker board the brood nest at the same time.   When I pull 4 frames from the hive it's normally 2 of the nicest brood frames and 2 honey/pollen frames.   I put two frames of drawn foundation in the middle of the brood nest, brood on either side of those, then two frames with foundation on the outside of the brood nest and then the honey stores on the outside.   This gives the queen lots of immediate laying space and gives the wax producing bees something to do.    Those 2 center frames of drawn comb often get filled edge to edge with brood and are a thing of beauty.

I normally pull one Nuc shortly after drones start flying at the beginning of May, and then another 3 to 4 weeks later.  Our major honey flows are July and August, so the bees have all of June to recover from the heavy splitting.  If your major honey flows are earlier then this strategy might not work for best honey production.

This strategy seems to have worked out well, I've had no swarms since I started 4 years ago, but perhaps my bees are not prone to swarming.

[Perry]

I do both, proactive and reactive.
Sometimes no matter what you do they want to swarm. With 65+ hives I cannot stay on top of them all and have to react to what I find.
I have also come to accept that swarming isn't as bad a thing as we tend to make out (unless you are in an urban location). Yes, you lose a bit of honey and some bees, but you end up with a young queen (maybe more if you play your cards right).
Sometimes I think we taker losing a swarm more personally as we see it as somehow being a failure on our part as beekeepers. It's nature, and cannot always be harnessed as much as we would like to think.

[LazyBkpr]

Well said by both.
   Cannot disagree with anything said..     In my home yard...  I like to pull the queens i put in the hives last year into nucs.. they survived the winter, and are building up their hives..  they are about to turn ONE year old..  They get nucs, and get new owners/homes.
   In my Out yards..  I leave them ALONE. These are my production hives, making honey..  When I make new queens, I will pull a bit of brood and bees from each of them to keep them from swarming..  I will stay ahead of the space needed as well.. and if they SWARM on me???
    YEEE HAAA!!!  I did something RIGHT!!!   With all of the things pressing down on the bees, from diseases and mites, to pesticides and CCD...  and "MY" bees decided to swarm??  It is because I did something RIGHT!!   
     Yeah..  I AM that good!!!!     

[riverbee]

proactive rather than reactive, like perry said.

something that confused me pete:

"Proactive swarm prevention involves managing a colony in such a way that they will not want to swarm.  Reactive swarm prevention involves checking the colony every week during swarm season for swarm cells and doing an artificial swarm when swarm cells are found."

to me being proactive does involve managing the colony for swarm management for all the available means that we have, and checking frequently/observing what's going on, reading frames, knowing our spring colonies to help us make decisions to deal with minimizing swarming.

reactive swarm prevention?  in my mind reactive means reacting to a colony that has already swarmed and after swarms. you describe 'reactive swarm prevention' as "involving checking the colony every week during swarm season for swarm cells and doing and artifical swarm when swarm cells are found." in my humble opinion this is being proactive?

sorry if i misread, or misunderstood what you said pete. a good thread for discussion.

[Jen]

Personally, 10 swarms last year just about did me in, so unprepared. This year I did what I thought was right for swarm prevention, and two out of 3 of my hives swarmed. I was more prepared and educated. Still learning this fine timing.

This year, when first swarm hit the sky I was somewhat disappointed, but then I get all exilerated with the process of the swarm and watch with excitement where it's going to land. Also, my first swarm this year lit from my hot hive. I actually breathed a sigh of relief. Good Riddance! It will be interesting to see if this new queen will calm the hot bees.

And, for the record standing in the middle of a swarm is wonderful!

[pistolpete]

riverbee: since this thread is about swarm prevention I kind of tried to draw the dividing line between managing a colony so that it will not want to swarm, and managing a colony when they start preparing to swarm.   Once they swarm, it's no longer swarm prevention, but swarm catching

I certainly did not mean to imply that what I call reactive swarm prevention is bad.   Those bee keepers that depend on spring flows for their harvest have to by necessity surf that line of keeping a hive strong enough to produce a surplus.   I'm lucky enough in my region that I can keep the hives weak during swarm season and still catch lots of honey in July and August.

[riverbee]

thanks pete, also i didn't get the impression that you meant reactive swarm prevention was bad.

with my strongest colonies, i am often on that fine line, because often for me, the spring flows are pretty good, and then later in july and august again.
i try to manage them to keep them strong yet keep them from swarming. if they swarm, i won't have a honey crop and have had this happen a time or two.

[brooksbeefarm]

Like others have said, i make splits and check for swarm cells once a week, and if i find swarm cells ( capped) i'll break that hive down make as many nucs i can, look for the queen if she's still there? and leave two queen cells in the mother hive. To many times i have tried taking just the queen cut out all but one or two queen cells thinking they won't swarm and have a new queen and i'll get a honey surplus, Only to have them swarm anyway. I have found this is the best way for me and if i don't want more hives i can sell the nucs, 2 or 3 nucs will bring 3 hundred dollars or more, probably more than the honey would have brought if it hadn't swarmed/ Remember, these are females and your not going to make them do anything they don't want to. Jack
PS. So i sell them.

[LazyBkpr]

LOL Jack.. well planned!

[dave]

I split my hive about 4weeks ago and  moved last years queen into a new hive box and had the bee's make a new queen in the old deep box to prevent swarming.  There is still a lot of bee's and wanted to make a nuc to help prevent swarming.  My question to my fellow beeks is ...can I move the queen again into a nuc after just moving her 30 days ago or will this cause a problem?

[iddee]

No problem at all, but is it the new hive you want to split? 30 days seems like a short time to get crowded in a new hive. Or do you mean remove the new queen the hive raised. If doing that, I would wait at least until her brood began emerging. Until then, the population will continue dwindling.

[LazyBkpr]

What Iddee said.. I am going to go on the assumption your talking about splitting the mother hive a second time.
   I would let the new queen roll out at least two generations if possible.. meaning 42 days, and then spit again if its not too late in the summer.

[dave]

When I split, it was with 3 deeps and did an even split moving the original queen into the new double deep and letting the bee's make a new queen in the mother double deep hive to stimulate a swarm.  This was about 27 days ago.  I haven't been in the mother hive with the, hopefully new virgin, so to be a mated queen yet to see how things are going, but will in the next few days.  The newly split hive where the queen was moved to, still has a lot of bee's in a double deep since many foragers went there.    I was thinking about moving the queen again to a nuc and requeening the newly split hive.  Will it hurt moving the queen around a lot?

[LazyBkpr]

its not the fact that there is a LOT of bees that you need to consider, it is the AGE of the bees that are in there. waiting as mentioned is to allow new young bees to emerge and replace some of the older bees..
   It takes 30 to 40 days to make a queen and have HER brood begin emerging. In the meantime, the bees in the hive are aging. You are asking bees ready to die to do the work of Young fresh bees.
   The answer is, Yes you can move the queen again, but the recommendation is NOT to do it too soon.

[capt44]

I look at it this way.
Swarming is a natural act, it's natures way of expanding bee populations around the country.
If the hive gets crowded they build the swarm cells which means the hive is in the swarming mode.
About a  week before they swarm they will put the queen on a diet so she can fly.
Now it takes from the time the egg is laid until the queen emerges from the cell 16 days.
If you go in and remove all the queen cells and that queen swarms you will end up with a queenless hive.
I tell folks to leave at least 1 or 2 swarm cells in the hive.

[pistolpete]

You're absolutely right Capt44, but it's also natural for cows to wander away if you leave the gate open.  It's my opinion that swarming needs to be controlled as best as possible for 3 reasons: 1: better honey harvests, 2: bee swarms like to infest buildings and your neighbours will not appreciate having to pay to get rid of them, 3: bees are an introduced species in North America and should not be encouraged to set up shop in the wild.    The last point is kind of academic, since swarms have been escaping for hundreds of years and feral bees are not a problem.  This might be because the mites have largely done them in.

[barry42001]

Much depends on what you want. If you want honey, swarm prevention is critical. A intact( un swarmed ) colony will gather 2 - 3 times as much honey as either the parent colony or the collected swarm. It's numbers and math. Takes 16 days to hatch a queen, the parent queen leaves 10 days into the queen cells development. The newly emerged queen will take about a week to ten days to get mated. About another week before the first egg is laid. 21 days before the first worker emerges. Another 2 weeks before those workers become foragers..meanwhile the parent workforce is steadily dying off due to age and predators.