[music]
OK we're here this time to talk about swarm
prevention and swarm control.
Oh got a bee after me there.
With prevention what we are trying to do
is to stop the bees from even
beginning to prepare to swarm.
And swarming happens when the hive gets
really crowded, there's a lot of congestion in
the hive, and there isn't enough
queen pheromone going around, so they start
to raise new queens and then they will swarm
prior to those new queens hatching out,
but as a beekeeper we don't really want bees
to swarm because we lose our production.
Bees are living off in a hollow tree somewhere
aren't going to help us out, so we try and prevent
that swarming from happening so that we get
more honey production.
So what we do as far as swarm prevention
with our colonies is we first thing in the spring
we go around and we label them with how
many frames of bees there are,
so we know which colonies to go
back and inspect for swarming and which ones
may need supering earlier.
One of the preventative measures for swarming
is to provide space for bees so they're not as
congested so we provide space by adding
honey supers so the process of supering
the colonies helps to prevent swarming.
If we have a young queen in the colony,
that helps prevent swarming as well
and there are certain strains of bees
that are less prone to swarming, and so we try
and keep those bees in our hive and we select
for colonies that have a low tendency to swarm.
We do clip our queens' wings, which helps to
prevent swarming, but it really just delays
that until a virgin can hatch out so that
we can't rely on that alone.
Adding supers at an appropriate time is the
most effective way of preventing swarming.
So we'll just have a look through.
This colony was rated a five.
As you can see now it has grown, so there are
ten frames of bees plus.
There's lots and lots of bees in there,
we're too late in adding a super to this colony.
We should have been here sooner on this one.
This colony is probably not as bad as far as
preparing to swarm, so we'll just have look
and we will be supering these colonies right now,
but I'm just going to have a look see,
OK lots of bees there side to side.
Again this earlier was rated 4.5,
it's now ten frames of bees,
so that was rated 4.5 on April 19th
and now we are at May 24th,
so we'll just take frames out and we'll have
a look see if they are raising any queen cells.
If they are, we are going to remove those
queen cells.
So just very gently pull that frame out.
There is a lot of drone brood on
this frame and so it's a little hard to take out.
OK,
so you would see swarm cells in locations
where there is room for a cell to hang down,
that is a queen cup.
Doesn't mean they are preparing to swarm
because often they have those cups around
just in case they need them.
So that is a queen cup.
We differentiate queen cups from queen cells.
If it's a queen cup there's nothing in it,
if it's a queen cell it will have an egg
or a larva or a pupa.
So to see if there is any egg in there we just
open up the cell with our fingers,
look inside and there is no egg there at all
so that's just a cup, no indication that they
are preparing to swarm on this frame.
Having a look for the queen as we go, just to try
to make sure everything is good.
Lots of nice brood in there.
This hive is just going to explode with bees.
We see another cup here
and there is nothing inside that cup,
so no indication that they are preparing to swarm.
We'll look at three brood frames.
If we are on brood frames,
that's where the queen cells will be
if they are raising any, so we don't
have to look at all of them because we'll find
cells if they are on even just by looking
at as few as three frames.
I don't even see any cups on that frame.
We would look in places like this for queen cells
or sometimes up on the face of the brood,
but anywhere where they have space for that cell
to hang.
There is another queen cup over here, but there
is no indication that they are in use.
We'll just open that up there,
no, nothing there at all.
So this colony is not preparing to swarm,
it might later though, so what we are going
to do is we'll add two honey supers to this colony
because it is a good strong hive and we need
to give lots of space to help relieve congestion
to prevent swarming.
So I'll just get that frame in there.
There's a lot of bees on this frame
and there's some drone comb on here.
It's going to be hard to get it in there without
crushing bees, so I'm just going to give them
a shake on the ground right near the entrance
and we're going to add
our queen excluder and then our two supers
to that hive.
Give them a little bit of smoke so that the
queen excluder isn't crushing bees
and then we'll just set that down, get it squared up.
We'll add one super on, make sure they're
nice and straight,
put a second super on there.
That looks good, OK.
So we know that hive isn't going to swarm
and we've supered it to help prevent it from
swarming and that's about all we can do for now.
This next hive we'll have a look through
and with all those bees hanging out front there
it wouldn't surprise me
if it's preparing to swarm.
Again we are kind of late with getting to this
one for supering.
The weather got really warm all of a sudden here
and things are just jumping.
We even saw a few bees dancing on the surface
of the front of the hive, dancing to indicate
where to find flowers.
There was a number of different directions
being indicated there.
So lots and lots of bees inside this hive
and outside as you can see.
So bees from one side to another.
So if we see swarm cells in here
we're going to have to make a decision
as what to do.
That will be based on what we see
and if we can find the queen.
Lots of capped brood here and again along the bottom
there we see cups, but they may actually be
cells they've been drawn out a little bit,
so let's open one up and see if there is anything
inside of it.
Aha there is an egg in that one.
So this is now a swarm cell
and they are preparing to swarm.
Just because they are preparing to swarm
doesn't mean they actually will if they
get on to a good nectar flow sometimes
they abandon swarming.
Now what I am going to do is look for eggs to make
sure the queen is still laying.
Yes I see lots of eggs.
So the queen at least three days ago was laying eggs.
OK so the queen is still laying.
If she was not laying I would not destroy
the cells because if she is not laying they may
already have swarmed
and the queen is gone
and if we destroy all the cells the hive will have
no queen.
So we are going to have a quick look for the queen.
There she is.
So she is getting smaller,
she'll be laying less eggs now as she is preparing
to swarm.
So you can see her abdomen is not that big,
she is shrinking up and getting ready
to fly away, but that won't happen because
one wing is clipped,
so what we are going to do is we will
cage this queen
and then we will remove
any queen cells that are present
and that will prevent them from swarming
and we'll give them four honey supers
because they need a lot of space with all these bees.
OK so we set the frame down there
and then we are going to shake off each
of the brood frames.
This one I can see is solid honey,
so there won't be any cells there.
So we make lots of space, I've got two frames out
of the box, so I've got lots of room to shake
and we just shake the bees off like that and check
for cells.
There's a cup, cup, you don't have to look
for them all now you are just looking
for cups or cells and destroying all of them.
If we miss one there wasn't much point doing
this because they could still swarm.
So that's why we shake the bees off because we will
miss them for sure or miss some for sure if
we don't have the bees all out of the way.
So cup, cup, cup and then just scan the rest there.
So it doesn't take that long to do this.
On a nice sunny day when there is a good nectar
flow bees are pretty easy to get along with
and we are able to shake them off like that.
Oh there's a more developed cell.
I didn't see that before because the bees were
covering the frame,
but if I open that cell up
you can see it is full with royal jelly and
there's the larva there.
So that larva would be I'm guessing
four to five days old.
So they are getting along on their way to swarming
so that's why that queen was getting smaller
because the swarming is more imminent than
I thought at first.
I'm just going to scrape that whole,
there's probably a number of queen cups in there,
so we'll just scrape that off.
Most of these don't even have eggs in them,
but rather than take the time to look,
we just destroy them all.
So now we are done there, we can release the queen.
There she is dropping down in and away she goes.
So now we can put our queen excluder on
and add our supers to this hive
and it needs lots, it's ready to go.
So we're hoping all that space and the fact
that we removed those queen cells
will eliminate the chance that they will
carry on with swarming, but we will come check
back within 10 days to see if there are queen cells
present and if so repeat that process.
Quite likely though we'll be getting into a major
nectar flow and that will be it,
they won't they will abandon this swarming
impulse and get on to collecting nectar.
See you next time.