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British Beekeepers Association Official Forum 

  • Pagden Swarm Control Method / Heddon Method

  • Beginners forum, ask beekeeping related questions and get help from other experienced beekeepers. Please use the Search Feature please to avoid duplicated threads
Beginners forum, ask beekeeping related questions and get help from other experienced beekeepers. Please use the Search Feature please to avoid duplicated threads
 #2054  by NigelP
 22 Feb 2019, 14:48
Difficult to write an exact process Chris as so many "depends" it would make the whole thing confusing. I adapt as required on the day I find I need to do something...but I always carry a few Snelgrove boards (or variations of ) in the truck.
My bees need to be housed in double brood, so a basic pagden would require a lot of equipment and space...so a no no for me.
Basically either a Snelgrove method I or method 2 depending on whether I find queen cells or not, splitting the 2 brood boxes with the Snelgrove board (supers on top of bottom brood). Not ideal as sometimes have too many brood frames, so I adapt as required.
But essentially (when possible) do as Snelgrove suggested...it works for me and the type of bees I keep. Just don't get hung up on his exact timing for opening and shutting the little entrances and exits. To be honest a Horsley board does pretty much the same job with only the one entrance but ain't so good for getting the workforce back into the lower boxes.

As an example I had a few late supercedure's last Sept where I will now have F2 queens...these are usually not good tempered. So will be assessed. As soon as drones are around I will do a Snelgrove method 1. But with a major difference I will add a frame of eggs from one of my breeder queens and KO any others in the top box. So keeps workforce together for honey crop and re-queens hive back to F1 at the end of the process.
Of course when new queen fails to mate or doesn't return from mating flight we then have to come with plan B, C and D :)

Also I have noticed that some of my F1 queens tend to swarm in their second full season, so will be trying to preempt a few of them as well.