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General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #10111  by NigelP
 27 Feb 2021, 19:03
A little early to be thinking about this....but Wally Shaw's last few articles on swarm control in the BBKA magazine have really hit the nail on the head. Essentially we do swarm control wrong as we don't reproduce the natural swarm composition. Something I figured out a few years back and worked out my own effective way. of dealing with swarming.
It will be interesting (for me at least) to see if Wally has come to same conclusions and methods in his future articles.
Pagden...always said it was total pants :)
 #10112  by Steve 1972
 27 Feb 2021, 19:34
I have read about all kinds of manipulations but your method seems by far the best way of swarm control.. ..however i forget things that are explained to me until i have actually done it my self..daft things like where does the sealed brood go and where does the Queen go when using the modified snelgrove board..

Put the pen to paper Nigel and i would happily pay to have that information on paper in front of me and many more would once they see the ease and success..
 #10116  by NigelP
 28 Feb 2021, 08:42
May well do that Steve, just need a few more facts about scout bees life spans to be sure that what I think happens is actually what is happening. However, it seems to work very well......more to follow.
 #10117  by MickBBKA
 28 Feb 2021, 18:01
It depends what you are looking to achieve when doing swarm control or prevention which are 2 separate topics which often cross over into each other. My favourite method now is my take on a Demeree. Its much more simple than faffing on with opening and shutting entrances every few days and is almost a walk away split after you have removed all but one queen cell in the top section.
I am looking to control the swarming instinct, raise a new queen without any loss in brood rearing or honey production and it works fantastic for me. I now often run with 2 queens for 3 to 4 months. Yes it involves lots of heavy boxes..LOL
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 #10120  by Patrick
 28 Feb 2021, 18:43
NigelP wrote:A little early to be thinking about this....but Wally Shaw's last few articles on swarm control in the BBKA magazine have really hit the nail on the head.
....
It will be interesting (for me at least) to see if Wally has come to same conclusions and methods in his future articles.
Pagden...always said it was total pants :)
I have used Wally Shaw’s take on Snelgrove ll as vertical splits, with 100 % success to date. I don’t personally rely on the upper portion to raise a Queen under the emergency response, but that’s my choice.

His method when you have found cells and the swarm has not yet gone, is given on page 15 of the leaflet at:

https://www.wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Swarm-Control-Wally-Shaw.pdf

I know what you mean about trying to remember manipulations you have read about Steve. I used to take post- it notes with me just to remind me what was supposed to end up where. Better to realise you have left the queen in the wrong box whilst you are still at the apiary to do something about it, than suddenly wondering in the car on the way home...did I ..?!
 #10121  by NigelP
 28 Feb 2021, 19:05
Close, but you both have the queen in the wrong box /wry chortle/
Put the queen with the nurse bees and all the queen cells away from the scout bees and other flying bees. Heresy I know :)
The bees will then tear down any queen cells, including the ones you would miss. No-one ever believes me when I tell them this, but to date 100% of queen cells have been destroyed....no work for you.
Leave a frame of sealed brood in bottom box.....and check it for emergency queen cells before reuniting. Alternatively you can add eggs or a frame with queen cells to bottom box if you want to rear another queen in this box.
Leave all alone for at least 7 days..Honey production continues as normal.
After 7 days or so all your scout bees, which are the major players in finding nesting sites and doing the buzz runs to instigate swarming....have now matured into foragers and lost their swarming fever.
At this point you can re-unite.
If you use a Snelgrove/Horsley type board with a mesh simply stick boxes back together after a week..
It's the reverse of what we have been taught but makes infinitely more sense once you realise the part the scout bee play in the swarm process. They may not be responsible for the initial conditions that instigate swarming but after that they are the major players....sticking queen with scout bees that still have "swarm fever" in my experience leads to them still swarming in many cases.
So far I've done my swarm control like this about 20 times in the last 3 years and only one re-unite showed signs of wanting to swarm after reuniting back. You don't even have to go through the bottom box until you unite.
It's all done and dusted in 7 days (or longer if you wish).

Dead simple and dead effective.
If you only have one brood box to start with even easier, double brood requires a bit more sifting to get frames with queen cells into top box....and there are even ways you can do it without finding the queen.....but enough for tonight.
 #10124  by Patrick
 28 Feb 2021, 23:01
Sorry you are right, I got the page number wrong - page 15 wasn’t describing what I thought he meant at all !

I think the AS split he describes on (Ahem!) page 23 of his booklet and derivatives of may be what he was alluding to but said there was insufficient space?

It certainly worked for me every time used in a vertical split although after destroying the deliberately created emergency cells in the bottom box and then moving the queen back down, I didn’t wait for the top box to raise its own queen but just requeened it.

Sounds like there are differences with your method but both thankfully reliably work, unlike the Emperor’s New Clothes Pagden.
 #10127  by MickBBKA
 01 Mar 2021, 01:14
Its important to remember to consider everyone's opinions, think them through and try them out and find what works for your bees and your location. Pagden method works fantastic ( done correctly ) as swarm prevention imho with my bees in my location, but not great for honey production. No idea about new clothes. I don't need them.
Working 6 days a week, swarm prevention is my biggest concern and in the 8 years I have kept bees I have found a way that works for me and my bees. I don't import bees, I work with locals, and have a reasonable understanding of what works here. What works for you is the main thing. Don't let anyone tell you its wrong. Its just different. :D
 #10132  by AdamD
 01 Mar 2021, 12:42
Nearly every beekeeping book you read has the Pagden/Heddon method as the 'bog-standard' method of swarm control. It is very artificial in the sense that the queen, on the old site, is given old flying bees only and it takes a long time for the colony to get going again and if the timing is poor, the honey crop is much reduced as the colony fades away in size over the subsequent few weeks; and the remaining queenless part turns out to be a very large unproductive colony to produce just one queen.
I find the nucleus method - where the queen and a couple of frames of brood are taken away (a similar result to you losing a clipped queen) - is something that I am not too keen on either as you can finish up with a large queenless colony to manage; It's very easy to miss queencells and you need to go back and check, so it's time-consuming and if a young queen doesn't get going quickly and first-time, (they often don't in large colonies, it seems), the colony loses it's stuffing and is not too productive.
I hope that my bees don't swarm and do use a Demaree on occasions - often as a reactive step - and I also use it for queen-rearing on occasions too. The 'queen in the top box' Demaree or modified Snelgrove 2 is not something that I have consiously done.
Nigel - you mention that after a week you can unite - do you have to repeat this process after a few weeks?
 #10138  by NigelP
 01 Mar 2021, 16:27
AdamD wrote:
01 Mar 2021, 12:42

Nigel - you mention that after a week you can unite - do you have to repeat this process after a few weeks?
Yup, although I prefer 10 days to be sure but have done a few after 7 days ands they have worked fine and then nothing else to do. They seem to have lost the urge to swarm (scout bees now turned foragers).
So far only had to repeat once but as my sample size is small (around 20) this may happen more frequently....I don't know yet.... It may also depend on strain of bee as well.
But easy peasy and you still get all the brood that queen has been laying in top box.