The artificial swarm, step by step

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What the split is for

Queen cells with larvae in them mean the colony has already decided. Knocking the cells out does not change its mind. It builds more, it may go earlier than it would have done, and it takes a bigger share of the bees with it when it goes. 4

So you split the colony instead. The queen and the flying bees go in one box. The brood, the young bees and the queen cells stay in the other. James Pagden published the method in 1868 and most beekeeping books still describe it. Whether it reliably switches the swarming urge off is contested: Wally Shaw, writing for the Welsh Beekeepers’ Association, puts the failure rate above half from about fifteen years of trying it, and teaches a different split instead. 3

Keeping them off the idea in the first place is the easier job. This page is for the day you open a hive and the cells are already there.

The day numbers behind it

Three dates in the life of a queen cell set every deadline in this job.

• An egg in a queen cup hatches on day three.
• The cell is sealed on day eight, and that is usually when the swarm goes.
• The virgin emerges on day sixteen, eight days after sealing. 4

Those eight days between sealing and emergence are the margin you are working inside. They are why the follow-up visit falls on day seven, and why the fortnight after it is hands off. The queen cell calculator will put real dates on all of it from the day you found the cells.

The numbers also tell you when you are too late. Queen cells with larvae in them mean you can still use this method. Sealed cells mean the colony may already have swarmed, and this is not the method for that hive. 1 Newly laid eggs standing on end, or the queen herself, are how you confirm she is still there. Reading the cells comes first, every time.

Before you open the hive

Set all of it out first. This job goes wrong when you have to walk back to the shed with a hive open behind you.

• A complete second hive. Floor, brood box, a full set of frames, crown board and roof. Drawn comb beats foundation, and a mix of the two is fine. 2
• Somewhere to stand the old box. A spare stand or a flat patch, at least a metre from where the hive sits now.
• A queen excluder. It goes under the new brood box, between box and floor, so the queen cannot lead the lot of them straight back out. That matters most if the new box is foundation. Take it out again once there is brood in there.
• Two frames of drawn comb to fill the gaps you leave in the old box. An empty gap in a flow gets filled with wild comb.
• Feed, only if the supers are staying off. About 4.5 litres of strong syrup, mixed at 1 kg of white granulated sugar to 630 ml of water. Syrup fed under a super puts sugar in your honey, so if the supers are going back on, do not feed. Making it up is a job for the night before.
• A drawing pin to mark the top bar above the one queen cell you keep.

Day zero, the move

Work in this order and nothing gets stranded halfway.

1. Move the old brood box, on its own floor, at least a metre to one side. This is the parent colony now. It keeps the brood, the nurse bees and the queen cells. 1
2. Put the new floor and brood box on the original spot, facing the same way. This is the artificial swarm.
3. Find the queen. Take a frame of open brood from the old box, shake the bees off it, check it carries no queen cell, and put her on it in the middle of the new box. 6
4. Fill the gap you have made in the old box with drawn comb or foundation.
5. Put the supers on the new box, at the old site, where the foragers are going to be. If you had no supers on, feed it instead.
6. Go through the parent colony and leave one good queen cell.

There is one detail the books differ on. The version above, a frame of open brood with the bees shaken off it, is what most clubs teach, and it gives the new colony something to settle around. The National Bee Unit’s varroa control sheet moves the queen on her own, with no brood at all, because a broodless swarm colony is the point of that version. 2 Both are in use.

Which box gets the flying bees, and why

A foraging bee comes home to a place, not to a hive. Every bee that was out flying when you made the move returns to the old spot and walks into the new box. The artificial swarm therefore ends up with the queen and the whole foraging force by the end of the afternoon, without you carrying one of them across.

The bees driving the swarm preparation are among the ones that fly, so they go too. 3 What stays behind is brood, nurse bees and queen cells. That is a colony with a queen to raise rather than a colony looking for the door.

One consequence catches people out. The parent colony loses its whole foraging force on the day, and it takes time to build a new one. Check it has stores on board, and feed it if it has not.

Day seven, the visit that counts

Two jobs, and the second one is the reason you came.

First, move the parent colony again. It goes to the other side of the artificial swarm, a metre or so past it. The bees that started flying during the week come out, find the hive gone from where they learned it, and join the artificial swarm. That thins the parent colony down a second time and makes a cast less likely. 6

Then take the queen cells in the parent colony down to one. It will have built more since you were last in. Every extra cell is a virgin that can leave with a cast, and the National Bee Unit is blunt about it: two cells risk losing a swarm when the first of them hatches. 2

Shake or brush the bees off each comb before you decide, and look along the side bars and the bottom bars. A cell hidden behind a cluster is the one that costs you the colony. Mark the frame you are keeping with the drawing pin, and handle it gently from then on. Do not shake that frame.

Day seven, and not later. Barnsley Beekeepers put the second move at around six or seven days, and that is what most clubs teach. 7 The National Bee Unit’s own sheet says day nine. Day seven is the safer of the two. A cell still unsealed on the day you split can seal the next day, and a virgin comes out eight days after that. Beekeepers also disagree about the count. Some leave two cells as insurance against one failing, and accept the risk of a cast.

Day fourteen, and leaving it shut

This is where most people lose the thread, and the mistake is nearly always doing too much rather than too little. Once the cell is chosen, the parent colony gets left shut for a fortnight. A virgin coming back from a mating flight to an open hive can end up in the wrong colony or fail to get home at all. If you genuinely have to look, look after five in the afternoon, when she is more likely to be indoors. 5

So day fourteen is a visit to the other box. The artificial swarm has the old queen and a full foraging force, and it will fill space quickly. Supers on, stores checked, and the excluder out from under the brood box once she is laying in there.

After that it is patience. Expect her laying somewhere between ten days and a fortnight from the day she emerges. Cold weather, or a big colony, and it takes longer. Look for eggs, or for a patch of cells polished ready for her. Three weeks with nothing means asking someone local rather than guessing.

When you cannot find the queen

This is the common case, not the awkward exception. A colony crammed with bees and set on swarming is the hardest place there is to find a queen, and she is moving. The National Bee Unit publishes a version that does not need her found at all. 1

The move is the same. What changes is that you stop hunting for her and let the bees answer the question.

1. Move the old brood box and floor a metre or more to one side. New floor and brood box of comb or foundation on the original site, supers on top of that.
2. Take one comb of eggs and young brood from the old box, check it has no queen cell on it, and put it in the middle of the new one. Fill the gap it leaves.
3. Close both up. Leave them seven days.

The bees then tell you where she is. The box that has her breaks its cells down, and you will find eggs. The box that does not have her builds emergency cells on the comb you gave it. Knock those back to a single opened cell with a healthy larva visible in it, and leave the queenright box alone.

It is the same split, worked backwards. You never have to know which half she is in.

Two colonies, or one again

You now have two colonies where you had one. That is a decision to make in a month, not today.

If you want the increase, you already have it. Feed the parent colony through its queenless spell and run it as a hive in its own right. Making up a nucleus covers the small end of the same idea.

If you want one hive back, wait. Do not put them together until the new queen has mated, is laying, and has a brood pattern you are content with. Then choose which queen lives. Leaving that choice to the bees can turn into a serious fight, and the old line about them always keeping the better queen is not one to bank on. 3

In practice that means late summer, or the spring after. Find the older queen, take her out, and put the two together. 1 Uniting two colonies has the method.