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General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #11279  by MickBBKA
 22 Jun 2021, 02:01
I am posting this for information for folks to consider after the discussion about Snelgrove methods.
I have never done a Snelgrove.
I have done my modified version of a Demaree several times in the method I will explain without any problems until this year.

So regardless of queen cells in the BB I remove the original queen ( OE ) and place her in a Brood Box ( BB ) of foundation or drawn comb on original site, add a Queen excluder ( QE ) two supers and another QE with a 2nd entrance then the original BB. This causes the bees to create emergency queen cells ( EQC ) in the top BB. I reduce to one and allow her to go on to mate and lay. At this point I either remove old Q and allow new Q to take control or split the colony in half and make 2 new colonies. Note the bees are allowed to move freely between queens and laying is not interrupted which is a great advantage for honey production.

This year for the very first time I found the new queen in the top BB with eggs then a week or so later she was in the bottom BB and the old Q gone. Plus point there was no break in brood rearing which is the whole idea of this system and they don't swarm although old Q must have been killed. But how did she navigate 2 QE ?? I think the queen moving is because my local black queens are very small after mating and by pass the QE early in their days.

Just thought I would throw another method out there to add to the confusion ..Ha !!
 #11281  by JoJo36
 22 Jun 2021, 05:29
I like Nigel's snelgrove 2 adapted method where you leave queen in original bb and place a new bb on original site with just a frame of sealed brood, eggs if you want them to develop a new queen. The bees destroy the queen cells in top box and you either let the bees make a new queen or pull them from bottom box. You can re-join them after around 10-14 days later. I didn't leave them long enough as I needed spare brood box but I am having another try as it worked the first time for sure!
 #11284  by NigelP
 22 Jun 2021, 08:39
Yes, not much different from a Snelgrove method 2 really just upside down :).
As I need to control where any new queens arise from the bees tearing down the queen cells is quite an advantage for me.
Also classic demaree is swarm prevention and is performed done before queen cells form......
 #11290  by AdamD
 22 Jun 2021, 17:11
I currently have two colonies with Horsley boards; this is a Snelgrove with a bit of queen excluder added. Both were used where colonies had started to produce queencells.

Nat 3 had just started a couple of queencells. Queen was put in bottom box and the brood put above the Horsley board with the front entrance open and 2 or 3 supers under it. I also cleared a couple of supers down into top brood box. Before this I checked and the single, remaining queencell was damaged as it was attached to the next frame. I will unite both brood boxes shortly as the top one now has no brood at all. The bottom brood box had no queencells last time I looked.

Nat 7. This has a virgin queen in the lower brood box as a result of a sealed queencell placed there. I had removed a few q/c's the week before and thought that I had lost the (clipped) queen. A later inspection revealed the one sealed queencell I had retained and that the queen was still there and back laying so the old queen went above the Horsley board with the brood.

For both, the queen excluder allows bees to move freely up and down the hive and the top entrance allowed bees to fly down. I haven't used the side entrances to bleed bees down. By now the top entrances are being used by some bees to go in and out.

I used a Demaree for queen-raising in the top brood box a few weeks ago. That colony is now back to normal although the old queen is slowing down so I will need to replace her soon if the bees don't do it first.