BBKA Forum

British Beekeepers Association Official Forum 

  • Swarm Control

  • General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #10258  by AdamD
 16 Mar 2021, 09:40
Having spare equipment is a precursor to swarm preparation so you are on the right road!
If a colony is flying, then it's OK to inspect - obviously if its cool, then you need to be quick. The first inspection only needs to be to see that the queen is laying and they have food. To check for the number of frames of brood which is a good measure of colony size, you can go in from each side until you find a brood frame; in this way you won't open the brood nest. With a colony that might be large already, you may need to go to a double brood - tricky for a first full year - to give them space. However a super is usually the first thing. Sometimes bees are reluctant to draw supers out, as Patrick says - and they tend to draw comb only when they need it.
Not all colonies will swarm and if you inspect each week, you should be able to catch them before they do in most cases. I personally don't do pre-emptive splits so I would wait until the colony is preparing to swarm before I did anything.
If a colony does swarm you have a chance of catching it as it will usually finish up a few metres from the hive initially. If you lose a swarm, it's not the end of the world and from the remaining colony you can make two which will easily get large enough to survive winter.

(The last paragraph sums up my first season after obtaining a colony the previous September. They produced swarm cells which I cut out to bide me some time, so I thought, but the swarmed (too) soon after, I caught them and put them in a hive. (No one told me to to put a queen excluder under the brood box to keep them in) so they swarmed again the same day and I lost them. I took a nuc off the remaining colony as an insurance policy and obtained a queen locally. Both the nuc and the remains of the colony did OK and got through winter. I even got a little honey. However the bought-in queen was a sod. (well - her offspring were) which was another challenge the next year).
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 #10260  by Patrick
 16 Mar 2021, 14:34
Sounds good Micheal. Spare equipment ready to go equals beekeeping contentment 👍.

The internet link to the particular vertical split I was referring to is in this thread above in my post of the 28th Feb (apart from its booklet page 17, ignore my phones suggested alternatives). It is much easier in practice than described in print, which is a typical beekeeping thing.

If you have found a method which looks to suit you, give it a go.
 #10383  by Patrick
 24 Mar 2021, 19:13
For those that are interested, Wally Shaw is doing some Zoom lectures on swarm control as part of the Lockdown Lecture series run by Somerset BKA. Have seen some great talks by Randy Oliver and Stephen Martin so far. I assume Wally will be talking about some of his thoughts outlined in the booklet I referred to above.

They are free and open to all to register for if you are interested. See the link at:

https://www.somersetbeekeepers.org.uk/