Stopping them wanting to swarm in the first place

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Prevention and control are two jobs

There is a line down the middle of swarm management, and it falls the moment the colony starts queen cells. Before it the work is pre-emptive: you are trying to stop them wanting to go. After it the work is re-active, and you are managing a decision already taken. 1

The two are not interchangeable. Shaw is blunt about beekeepers who reach for the pre-emptive methods once cells have appeared, hoping the cells will go away. There is very little chance of that.

This page is the cheap half, because it happens on your timetable. Once there are cells you want the artificial swarm instead.

What makes a colony want to go

The triggers are a mix of what happens inside the box and what happens outside it. You can do something about the first list and nothing about the second. 1

• Inside: colony size, room for the queen to lay, congestion in the brood nest, how mature that nest is, possibly the age of the queen, and space to process nectar. The spread of queen substance is thought to be the main mechanism.
• Outside: the season and the weather. The urge peaks in May and June, then falls away. A spell of poor weather with little flying time often brings swarming on, which is the opposite of what people expect.

So this is March to June work, and most of it wants doing before the colony is big enough to have the idea.

Space ahead of the flow

Fresh nectar takes up two to four times the volume of the honey it becomes, because the bees spread it thin to dry it. The space they need during a flow is far bigger than the crop you take off. 1

The rule for the next super is not about honey at all. When the top super is full of bees, wall to wall, add another, even if there is barely any honey in it. Stay one jump ahead, without adding so much volume that the colony cannot keep it warm.

No amount of supering makes up for a brood nest with nowhere to go. In a long wet spell they crowd back down into the brood area anyway.

Keeping brood frames doing brood work

Early on the bees build a ceiling of capped honey over the brood nest. Those stores are insurance, and they are reluctant to uncap them, so the nest can only grow downwards. What you want instead is brood touching the queen excluder across as much of its width as you can manage. Then the honey ceiling forms in the first super, where you wanted it. 1

On brood and a half that can mean swapping the boxes so the shallow sits under the deep. Or lift a frame of early nectar into the first super before it gets capped, because capped honey down there is a fixture for the season.

Shaw makes one point most books contradict. The best place to give the queen room is below the nest. A box of drawn comb put on top gets treated as a super and filled.

Old comb out, new comb in

Replacing brood comb is a disease job first. The National Bee Unit says at least every three years, and more often after disease, or where thymol or tau-fluvalinate get regular use, because they leave residues in the wax. 6 On a three year cycle that is three or four frames a year. 1

Plan it the autumn before. Move the frames that are due out to the outside of the box, where they will hold nothing important next spring. 2 Early in the year the swap has to be drawn comb.

Bees do not build comb on spec. The National Bee Unit sets five conditions, and all of them have to be met:

• A queen in lay.
• Plenty of bees young enough to make wax.
• Warmth, because wax will not come without it.
• Nectar coming in, or syrup on the hive.
• Nowhere left to put stores.

Never put foundation against the hive wall. Bees find it hard to cluster there, so it is drawn last and often only on the inner face. Early in the season it goes beside the outermost frame of brood.

The argument about spreading the brood nest

Later on, with a box crammed with bees, Shaw puts foundation inside the brood nest rather than at its edge, and reports it drawn and laid in four or five days. The usual objection is that breaking the nest brings on queen cells. He says that does not seem to happen. 2

The National Bee Unit says the opposite as a rule. Undrawn frames belong at the edge of the brood nest rather than inside it, and the brood frames stay together. They go in only when a flow will get them drawn. 5

Both are careful sources, and the question is not settled. Read spreading as a manoeuvre for a big colony, in warm weather, on a flow. Short of all three, work at the edge.

One tell holds either way. If the foundation has not been touched a week later, look for queen cells. The foundation did not cause them. The colony had already decided.

Moving brood up, or splitting the colony

The Demaree method dates from 1892 and is probably under-used. Frames of brood come out of the bottom box and go into a box above the supers, and drawn comb fills the gaps below. The queen gets new cells to lay in, and nurse bees move up to cover the brood at the top. 1

Three or four frames is usually enough. It suits a colony at or near its peak, so mid-May to mid-June is the window. 2

One catch, and it matters. The bees up top can be far enough from the queen to decide they have lost her, and start emergency cells. Look through that box after five to seven days and knock any down.

Splitting is the strongest pre-emptive method and the most reliable. Shaw asks four things of one:

• Radical enough to hold for the rest of the season.
• Both halves viable, with enough bees, brood and stores.
• Right for where the colony is in its development.
• Early enough that both halves build up again before the next flow.

Done straight after the spring flow, a split can yield more than the one colony would have. Making up a nucleus is the practical version.

Young queens, and what is known

Queens keep going for years, but the work falls off. The laying slows once she has a few years on her, and the pheromone signal weakens with it. The National Bee Unit advises a swap once she is producing less, and says a productive colony is normally headed by a queen of two years or less. 4

That is the honest version of the young queen argument. Queen substance is thought to be the main mechanism behind the decision, so less of it is plausibly part of the picture. But Shaw lists the age of the queen among the triggers with a “possibly” attached, and no more. 1

Requeening is worth doing on its own merits. Treat it as a hedge rather than a fix.

Looking often enough to see it coming

The National Bee Unit puts the swarm inspection season at April until late July, and asks for a look roughly every week until the risk passes after the end of July. 4

Shaw is honest about the limit of that. Even on a six or seven day interval, some colonies start cells and go before the first one is sealed. No routine catches those. Clipping the queen’s wing extends the safe interval to about fourteen days, but it is not swarm control, and he says plainly that it divides beekeepers. 1

Queen cells, and what you are looking at covers the difference between a play cup and a decision.

When they have decided

Once a colony is triggered it is very rare for it to go off the idea. An abundant flow sometimes does it, and a shock removal of brood with foundation in its place sometimes does it, but neither can be relied on. 3

Tearing the cells out is worse than useless. They build more, they often go earlier than they would have, and the delay tends to make the swarm bigger. Do it twice and you risk a colony with no queen and no brood young enough to raise one.

Control has its own window too. The National Bee Unit’s method for when you cannot find the queen needs queen cells with larvae in them. Once the cells are sealed it is too late, because the colony may already have gone. 7

Good pre-emptive work always delays swarming. It does not always prevent it. 1 Any beekeeper claiming complete control of swarming is not being straight with you.