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Shook swarm

5K views 11 replies 7 participants last post by  Michael Bush 
#1 ·
If I shake all the bees from a hive into another hive box with fresh comb, how long should it be before I see brood? I did this to break the brood cycle of varoa on March 10. Just wondering if anybody knew how long it takes for the queen to start laying again. I did catch her and gently put her on the new comb.:s
 
#4 ·
And the queen comes from where? A laying queen you put in the new hive? Some open brood for them to raise one? A laying queen from another of your hives? If you give them a queen who was laying when you put her in, she should be laying immediately. If you introduced a purchased queen in a cage, she might start laying immediately after release or she may take as long as two weeks. Them raising them own? That could take 24 days or so.
 
#5 ·
I caught the queen in a queen catcher and released her in the new box after I shook all the other bees in. She was laying well before. The bees are very calm, and bringing in pollen and sugar water (I am open feeding). I just figured that after a week I would see larvae. but, nope. Weather has gone cold again, and I can't check them, looks like, for another week or so. The gentleman at Wolf Creek Apiaries told me the bees would quit working if there was no queen. I sure hope she is OK.
 
#7 ·
#10 ·
No offense, but this seems like a very ill-advised move. I'm not saying that breaking the brood cycle is bad, quite the opposite, but the timing and approach, assuming you're trying to get a decent honey yield, was very poor. I will break the brood cycle, but I don't do it so early in the buildup cycle. The way you did it will no doubt seriously set back this colony. Perhaps a highly productive colony was not your objective, but I'd not suggest this to others. There are much more effective ways to break the brood cycle and still get a great honey yield, without posing so much risk to the colony.
 
#11 ·
No offence taken. Looking back, I did do it way too early. I did a check and found a LOT of larvae that had been pulled out of the comb and dropped to the floor of the hive. I found other signs of a heavy Varoa infestation, so I did the shake to try to break the mite cycle. I also wanted to get them out of the horizontal Langstroth and into a Kenyan top bar. Didn't figure to have that big of a break in the brood cycle. Live and learn!
 
#12 ·
I would never waste all that brood comb. IF I were trying to make a break in the brood cycle, I'd take a frame of brood and the queen and a comb of honey and put them in a nuc, and let the old hive raise a new queen. By the time the new queen is laying, there is no brood in the hive. If you do this two weeks before the flow, you will get an INCREASE in production.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beessplits.htm#confiningqueen
 
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