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ocba - Re: [ocba] Questions related to upward migration

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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Lewis Cauble <lewis AT hivebody.com>
  • To: Jerry Schoendorf <jerry AT schoe.com>
  • Cc: "ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org" <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Questions related to upward migration
  • Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2014 08:56:45 -0400 (EDT)

Jerry,
In my opinion, the bees are on a straight path to swarm city.  Depending on how far along the swarm cells were on April 2, they may have already made the move.  The mother queen and her crew will generally swarm once those queen cells are capped.  If they have not left yet, I suspect they will head out soon after this rainy weather clears.
 
In my limited experience I have had some success doing small splits in this situation.  I moved the queen and 3 or 4 frames of resources (without queen cells!) to a new box and left the new queens to emerge and takeover the old colony.  I believe there is still a risk of secondary swarming where virgins leave with some of the work force.  I thought I would be a smarty pants a year or two ago and prevent swarming by simply removing the mother queen before she left with the workforce.  Seemed like a reasonable thing to do.  It seems that each of the virgins that emerged swarmed and took a good sized chunk of the workers with her so when it was all said and done I was left with almost no bees in the colony. 
 
I don't know exactly what you should do to preserve your honey production, but I would certainly attempt some sort of a split as soon as possible.
 
Lewis
 

On April 6, 2014 at 8:33 PM Jerry Schoendorf <jerry AT schoe.com> wrote:

Hello Lewis,

Your explanation and listing of options for a congested brood box(es) is most helpful. Thank-you!

 

We had a 70 degree day back on Feb. 20 and it was used to check my two hives, each having 3 medium 10 frame boxes. The configuration was classic, viz. capped honey above, brood in all stages in the middle, and empty comb below. 

 

We had another 70 degree day on March 2 when I found that the queens had been busy and there was some brood in all three boxes but mostly in the middle. Nevertheless, I reversed the bottom two boxes and checker-boarded 2 brood frames with either empty or nectar filled frames in the top two boxes.  All boxes in each hive were mapped and recorded.

 

The next 70 degree opportunity was on March 11 and I did what you described in your option two description.  Checker-boarding continued, an excluder was added on top followed by a medium super. Frames full of capped brood were moved above the excluder and empty frames distributed below.  Everything was mapped again. I felt pretty good at that point.

 

The most recent visit was on April 2.  Of the 30 frames below the excluder, 6 were empty foundation, 2 are empty drawn comb, 10 are full brood, 5 are half full of brood, 14 are full of nectar and pollen, and 3 are something in between. But there were some swarm cells!!

 

Questions: have the bees pulled the trigger on swarming in spite of my efforts? Is a split my only recourse?

 

I’d like to keep the work force for the coming nectar flow together. If a split is done now is it possible to remove one of  the queens in a couple weeks and consolidate the hives after the nectar flow has started?

 

Your input and suggestions from others is greatly appreciated. This is my first spring as a beekeeper and I’m feeling my way along.

 

Jerry




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