Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The workers reduce queen feeding and foraging, egg laying slows and stops, but not
before queen cells are started in the queen cell cups prepared just for this occasion.
You'll see queen cells hanging from the bottom of brood frames, little or no open
brood, and little activity. Once the queen cells are capped (nine days from egg to sealed
cell), the door opens and the swarm takes off.
If all the queen cells are still uncapped (or all those you can find), you can make a
split of the colony and, maybe, thwart the swarm. Once queen cells are well started, the
colony is probably going to swarm. Watch for it, and perhaps you can retrieve it.
There are as many techniques to control swarms as there are beekeepers. Basically,
they focus on separating the brood from the bees, and they all entail a fair amount of
work. The best choice for managing swarms is to prevent the behavior before it begins
or to catch the swarm.
Making an Early Spring Split
If expansion or swarm prevention is in your plans, early spring is the time to consider
this activity. If your colony has at least four frames with open brood and six with sealed
brood, you can divide the colony into two, much like dividing a daylily or other peren-
nial.
Have ready a screened bottom board, four medium supers (two with frames), an in-
ner cover and cover, and a feeder for the split colony. Order a queen to arrive close to
the time you want to do this.
When the queen arrives in the mail, or when you pick her up from your local suppli-
er, assemble all the equipment near the colony you want to divide. Shoot for late in the
day so as many bees as possible are home. Place the bottom board on the hive stand and
an empty super (keep the frames close) on top of that.
Smoke your existing colony—now called the donor colony—remove the cover, inner
cover, and top box, and locate the box below with the most brood.
From the donor colony, carefully remove two frames (three are OK, too) of open
brood (there may be some sealed brood in the center), complete with the bees that are on
the frames. Make sure the queen isn't on any of the frames you move—if you find her,
let her run back into the box. Put those frames in the center of the split box. On either
side, place frames with sealed brood and the bees from the donor colony. This should
give you four or five frames of brood and some bees. Take another frame of open brood,
hold it over your new box, and give it a good downward shake so that most of the bees
fall off and into the box. You may need to do this two or three times to get enough bees
in the box.
Add one frame of honey, and one of honey and pollen on either side of the sealed
brood for convenient feeding.
