Modified Snelgrove ll
As described by Wally Shaw
Swarm control without finding the queen at the start
Stage one
I will first describe performing it vertically using a division/manipulation board. Frames of mostly sealed brood, including some eggs but excluding the queen and queen cells, are moved to sit “on the hive floor” at the home site; this is the “swarm”. Above this goes a super, and above this, a manipulation board like my EB. Make a stack, like a burger, so: box with three frames, QE, two supers, QE, The rest of the brood and queen go on top. The top entrance faces backwards. Give the queens as much drawn comb as you can. A mixture of drawn and foundation will suffice.
The parent colony loses its flying bees to the artificial swarm, so it loses the swarming impulse, and the queen cells will be torn down, and the queen will resume laying.
In the queen-less artificial swarm, the bees will start emergency queen cells – and this appears to be an important part of the process leading to a loss of the swarming impulse.
Stage two
It should take place 9-10 days later (12 days is the absolute safe limit). This timing is important because all the queen cells in the parent colony must be torn down (this usually happens quite quickly), but, more importantly, it must be done before any of the emergency queen cells in the artificial swarm can emerge.
The second manipulation starts with destroying all the emergency queen cells in the artificial swarm. When this has been done, the queen in the parent colony should be found and transferred to the box at the bottom of the hive. As soon as the queen is removed from the parent colony, the bees will start emergency queen cells using the brood that the queen has recently laid.
fb flying bees
Q queen
B brood
e egg S super
EB manipulation board
QE queen excluder
fob frames of brood
QCx queen cells destroyed.
Following the repatriation of the queen, the artificial swarm will settle down to rebuild and, providing there are plenty of nurse bees, this will happen quickly. It is thought that the temporary loss of the queen, but with the means of making emergency queen cells to replace her, is what turns off the swarming impulse in the artificial swarm. You don't need to take any precautions when returning the queen to the artificial swarm. They should be expecting a virgin queen any day now, and the fact that they suddenly have a mature laying queen does not seem to bother them. Their willingness to accept the queen is thought to be because all the bees in the artificial swarm are her offspring, and it is just their mother's return after an absence of 9-10 days. The hive smell remains common when using a split board like the EB with some mesh exposed. Meanwhile, the parent colony will also settle down and raise a new queen and make no attempt to swarm. No thinning of queen cells is required.
The Manipulation done horizontally
Discussion
The question arises: why is it necessary to destroy the emergency queen cells in the artificial swarm? Why can they not simply be moved to the now queen-less parent colony to save time (9-10 days)? The answer is that you can do this, but destruction is the safe option. The emergency queen cells produced in the artificial swarm have been raised in the absence of a large number of dedicated nurse bees – the ones that specialise in feeding queen larvae – and the queens produced under these conditions may be inferior. However, if the colony is large and there are numerous bees in the supers that could quickly adapt to produce the correct type of royal jelly, this may be an unnecessary precaution. The parent colony has all the nurse bees it needs to make good queen cells, and the delay in re-queening is probably worthwhile eventually.
Advantages
One of the advantages of this method of artificial swarming is that for the first manipulation, when the colony is crammed with bees and the queen is being harried to slim her down, the queen does not have to be found. When doing the second manipulation, she must be found, and there will be fewer bees. The queen, having settled back to her day job, should be found more easily, making the second manipulation a simpler and less stressful process.
Wrong timing
If, for some reason, the beekeeper gets the timing of the second stage wrong and the emergency queen cells have released virgins into the artificial swarm, it is not the end of the world. It is unlikely that all the virgin queens can be found and the old queen re-introduced. So it is better to allow the artificial swarm to re-queen naturally, leave the old queen where she is, and run the parent colony as the main honey-producing unit.
Aftermath of Artificial Swarming
If the artificial swarming process is successful, there will be two colonies instead of one, and the beekeeper may or may not want this.
If an increase in the number of colonies is not required, reunite. This is easier when using a split board than with the new colony on a separate hive stand. Reuniting should not be attempted until the parent colony has developed a new laying queen and she has proven herself to be a good’un. Using a split board, a two-tier colony (one on top of the other, each with its supers) can be retained until the end of the season, when a decision as to its future can be made. Independence day should be delayed for at least 5-6 weeks after the new queen has started to lay. When uniting two colonies, the beekeeper should choose the queen because leaving the colonies to do it for themselves can result in conflict. From the beekeeper’s perspective, the new queen is usually the better one.