Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Place empty frames of comb in the original brood chamber.
Find the queen and put her into this empty brood chamber. She will probably be
with the brood in the new brood chamber.
On this new brood chamber, place a queen excluder or a super of honey (which
acts as a queen excluder).
Place the new brood chamber(s) above this.
After seven to eight days, destroy all queen cells in the upper brood chamber(s).
You can see what is happening here. You are giving the queen a new nest in which there
is plenty of room to lay eggs. You are effectively stopping the bees in the upper brood
chambers from swarming because they have no queen up there, but you are also allowing
for the colony's normalization because you are keeping it all together while preventing
the upper part from raising new queens by destroying any queen cells. Overall, the
colony retains its bees and so is able to take advantage of any honey flow.
The artificial swarm (2)
The procedure for this is as follows:
Move the entire hive to a new position.
Place a new brood box with floor in the old position.
Put the queen on a frame of brood in the new box.
Fill the new box with frames of foundation or comb.
Place the original supers with or without the queen excluder in the new hive.
Position the old hive anywhere in the apiary.
Cut out all the queen cells in the old hive.
One week later, again cut out all the new queen cells in the old hive except one,
or:
