Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Take two frames of brood (capped and uncapped) with as many adhering bees as
possible and place them in this box.
Place a frame of honey and pollen either side of them.
Fill the rest of the box with foundation or comb.
In between the two brood frames, place a caged queen or a queen cell.
If necessary, shake in some more bees from a brood frame to make up the
numbers.
Give the new colony some sugar syrup in the frame feeder and place it near to the
other occupied frames and close the hive.
Reduce the entrance to one bee space to discourage robbing, or block a reduced
entrance with grass so that robbing won't occur and the bees in the new hive won't
rush out and return to the old hive.
Fill the old hive with comb and close up.
You have now lessened the chances of swarming in the old colony and you have an extra
colony that, in this case, is called a 'top'. You can either keep this separate or reunite it
with the original to take advantage of a major honey flow. By reuniting the hives you
will have done your best to ensure a good harvest, which would have been lowered by
swarming. In undertaking this type of manipulation you make sure that the queen is
in the original chamber. This is the only disadvantage of this method: you must locate
the queen.
The demaree method
This method keeps the hive together so that it can take advantage of a honey flow,
but it is time consuming and difficult to do on a large scale. It is, however, an excellent
swarm-prevention method for the hobbyist. If you find queen cells in the colony, follow
this procedure:
Destroy
all
queen cells. Don't miss any.
Place
all
the frames of brood into a new brood chamber.
