Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Preventing swarming
Very experienced beekeepers advocate many methods for preventing swarming that,
to my mind, try to go against what the bees are attempting to do instead of going in
their direction. The two main culprits are clipping one of the queen's wings and, in
conjunction with this, destroying queen cells. Those who advocate clipping the queen's
wings, say this prevents her from flying and so going with a swarm. The theory is that
she will rush out with the swarm, fall on to the grass and climb back into the hive. The
swarm, in the meantime realizes the queen is not with them and flies back to the hive.
Doing this is neither pleasurable nor profitable and, with the bees back in the hive, the
same pressures that lead to swarming in the first place are again in place and the bees are
likely to have another go. I saw this in my early beekeeping days. A similar method that
at least doesn't mutilate the queen is to place a queen excluder over the entrance so that
the queen is prevented from leaving. What that achieves I have no idea.
The swarming process takes a full month out of a colony's productive period, from
the moment the queen cups are made to the moment the swarm leaves. The bees will
still forage and store nectar and pollen but at a reduced rate compared with a hive
that isn't preparing to swarm. All the activities of the bees described above over that
month hugely reduce the colony's ability to produce a surplus compared with that of a
colony that has been deterred from swarming in the first place. Deterrence is, I believe,
therefore, the best overall management plan.
Clipping wings should especially have no part in beekeeping. On a large scale it would
be far too time consuming and, on a small scale, it solves nothing. It was prohibited for
much of my commercial beekeeping time under EU rules for the production of organic
honey. Some will say it gives the beekeeper a better time-frame to inspect their bees
and so prevent swarming because the beekeeper destroys the swarm cells before queens
emerge. The mathematics of this method's timelines are sound, but that is the only
good thing about it.
There are three points here:
1.
In many colonies, by the time you find sealed swarm cells, there is a fair chance
your bees have already swarmed and you just haven't noticed.
