Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Additional equipment
You will need a well ventilated, three- or four-frame nucleus box and a frame feeder.
Procedure
The following is the procedure for the swarm box method:
Take a well ventilated, three- or four-frame nucleus box. Into this shake the bees
off three well covered combs of brood. If you shake off brood frames you will be
more certain of obtaining nurse bees.
Place into the box a full frame mainly of honey but with some pollen and a full
frame of pollen. Do
not
put in any brood. Leave a gap between the frames.
If the box takes four frames, put in a frame feeder filled with sugar syrup.
Prepare the larvae by your chosen method and place this frame into the box
between the two frames of stores.
Close the nuc and place in a dark, cool room for about 24 hours. Note this in your
diary.
About one hour before opening the nuc, take a populous, healthy colony of at least
two storeys and confine the queen to the lower chamber with a queen excluder.
Put a frame of young larvae into the centre of the upper chamber (this will attract
the nurse bees) and a frame of pollen. Make sure there is a gap between them.
Fill the rest of the chamber with sealed brood or stores.
An hour or two later, open the swarm box and transfer the started queen cells to
the main colony above the queen excluder and close up. Note this in your diary.
The cells stay here until they are transferred to the mating nuclei - i.e. just before
the virgin queens emerge. Meanwhile, you can place another batch of prepared
larvae into the swarm box.
Advantages
: This method is fast and simple, can be used for continuous production and
is very reliable.
