Swarm Prevention & Control, Askquith-Ellis N.D.B.

Why should you bother about swarm prevention or control?

If the colony swarms you loose most of the foraging population of bees and the queen. For the previous 10-14 days the queen has been gradually reducing her egg laying to enable her to fly, and the scout bees have been out looking for a new home instead of for better supplies of food! This all adds up to considerably less honey for the beekeeper at the end of the season and less pollination of the plants in the immediate area. There is also the problem of the swarm taking up residence in a totally unsuitable place - down a chimney for instance, by no means a rare occurrence in these times of few hollow trees for homes. And, of course, as a beekeeper one has a duty to the general public who are in general terrified of insects - be they bees, wasps or hover flys!

There are several ways to prevent swarm preparations being made by the bees but none of them are fool proof - in fact the beekeeping world would, I'm sure, be extremely grateful to anyone who finds a consistently successful method to prevent swarming.

Ensure the colony is headed by a young queen - a one year old queen is less likely to swarm than a two year old and a three year old is very likely to swarm.

Give the queen plenty of room to lay eggs. This means making sure the brood area is not choked with food. One way of doing this is to remove two frames of food from the brood chamber when the flow starts, and replace with two frames of foundation for the bees to draw out. If you use a double brood chamber then reverse them. Since the queen will not have laid right to the bottom of the bottom box nor to the top of the top box this manoeuvre gives queen more room to lay.

If all the frames are full of brood then take two or three frames of the brood and make up a nucleus, adding plenty of bees to take care of the brood. Give it a new queen or queen cell.

Put on the supers in plenty of time to act as a home for the bees when the weather is bad or at night, and to prevent tll e brood nest becoming clogged with food in the event of an unexpected flow, It appears that drawn comb is more effective in preventing swarming than foundation. Add first super before the bees have filled the brood chamber and the second before the first is filled with bees and so on.

Control

Once queen cells have been discovered in the hive some method of control must be instigated to prevent a swarm leaving. There are many such methods but I will describe the one which I believe to be the easiest for a beginner.

In the first instance, on finding queen cells, remove every single cell. I cannot stress how important this is. Now give the bees more space in the form of another super.

Before the next inspection decide how you w .1 deal with the hive if it has made queen cells again. Sometimes (rarely) knocking down the queen cells and giving more space will stop swarm preparations. If you just continue to knock down the queen cells the bees will get disheartened and you will not have much honey. The other disadvantage to this method is that eventually the bees may be so determined to go they will leave as soon as the queen has laid an egg in a queen cell!! (Bees do not read the same books as we do!)

Demaree Method or Swarm Control

The purpose of this method is to separate the brood from the queen which gives the queen plenty of space to lay and a slight feeling of having swarmed!

Extra Equipment needed

Brood box
Drawn comb or foundation to fill it Second queen excluder
Possibly one or two supers with comb or foundation

Method

Place the supers on the upturned roof and cover them
Move the brood chamber (A) to one side (Either on to the COVERED supers, or to a separate stand, or to the other side of the stand if there is space) and cover
Put the empty, new brood box (B) on the original floor (in the original position)
Now, as with most swarm control methods and with as little disturbance as possible

FIND THE QUEEN. Place the queen and the frame on which she is found into the centre of the new brood box (B) first ensuring that there are no queen cells present on the frame. Next, place next to the queen a frame of sealed brood, again checking to make sure there are no queen cells on the frame. Fill the new brood box (B) with the drawn comb (or foundation if you have no drawn comb available) . • Replace the queen excluder and supers (there must be plenty of space in the supers, add an extra one if necessary) Put the second queen excluder on the top of the supers. • On top of this put the old brood box (A) having first removed all the queen cells and put in two replacement frames. • Replace the crown board and roof. One week later return and remove all the emergency queen cells the bees have built in the top brood box. If you neglect to do this a swarm may well issue despite all the work you have done! Tip - As the brood hatches the bees will fill the cells with honey which makes the box very heavy. When you move this box put some of the frames into a spare brood box, nucleus box or even a cardboard box to make lifting possible! The full frames can be extracted or saved to give to the bees at a later date. I would advise replacing the old queen as soon a possible to prevent more swarming activities. To Clip or Not to Clip the Queen's Wings? Clipping the Queens wings gives you more time between inspections without the danger of losing a swarm. This can be very useful if your bees are kept in an out apiary or you have taken them to the rape or other crop for honey. The reason behind this is as follows:- • It takes 16 days for the queen to emerge after the egg is laid. Sometimes the bees build a queen cell over a two or three day old larva. This means it could be already 6 days into the rearing process - 3 days as an egg and 3 days as a larva. • The clipped queen will be reluctant to try to fly until the new queen is near to emerging and when she does try leaving with the swarm she falls to the ground and the swarm eventually returns to the hive to await the first virgin to emerge. • Following inspection it will be at least 10 days before the virgin queen can emerge from her cell and fly with the swarm giving you 10 days before you have to inspect the colony again. On inspecting the colony and finding the queen not present, reduce the queen cells to one, preferably open and in which you can see the larva, just to be sure it is healthy. Now leave the colony alone to rear its new queen. In 3 weeks there should be eggs and brood present. This method of swarm control is not ideal but it does mean that even though you lose the queen you will not lose the bees. It is worth saying again that if you manage your colonies for honey production then it is far better to prevent your bees from swarming. Once they start making swarm preparations the honey gathering is neglected and even if you don't lose the swarm you will lose a lot of honey.

This is a test page for our BEEKEEPING IN A NUTSHELL series. Coming soon!
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