Hi,
Tried checker boarding again this year on a hive and believe I got it right this time. Got it done late Feb (Pa) about 9-10 weeks before apple bloom. Had good stores and drawn comb to checker board and did so with 2 deeps AND 2 mediums over the brood nest! Yes, 4 total boxes check boarded over them.
So hive setup from bottom after CB was: M(cluster here)-DCB-DCB-MCB-MCB
(Oddly I could do this as the bees did not use a ton of stores over a pretty darn bad winter. Only difference was I tar paper wrapped the hive? Could this help increase the ambient hive temps enough for them to use that much less? Well something was up, they like must have been rationing or something!)
Checked on 4-9. They had good brood patterns in the bottom medium and the deep above that. Lots of brood in all stages, good number of bees. I added 2 med drawn supers at this time as I was going out of town.
Checked yesterday. Top 2 supers, have sign of some new wax on drawn frames and a few cells here and there w nectar.
3rd Medium down, has at least 3+ full frames of stores, some already being capped.
4th med down has some stores and pollen in outside frames and center frames have some brood in them, some capped, some larva, some eggs w typical band of stores at tops. Noted that in some of the missing brood cells, they are putting nectar. ***Found 2 half built queen cells on bottom of 1 frame in this box. They have "vanilla pudding" (aka royal jelly) in them soooooo, something is on!
From reading Walts stuff I remember him stating that with the fast buildup due to CB, they will often re-queen and that these supercedure cells are often at the bottoms of the frames "like" swarm cells.
Now seeing that this hive has 2 deeps and 1.5+ mediums full of brood, I could see that she might be "worn out" already and maybe they want to replace her.
However, what scares me is that they seem to be "back filling" some of the open brood cells with nectar. I did see some new wetted eggs in these open brood areas as well, but they are sure putting some nectar in these open brood cells as well especially in the lower boxes.
So, is my CB going to work or are they swarming in a about 2-3 weeks? I don't have enough experience to know, anybody educated guesses?
Next this has me thinking, if buildup or congestion can contribute to swarming, then why not time with CB'ings quick buildup, and either cage or kill or remove the queen just before or at the main flow or signs of queen cells to deter swarming but still allowing for a large population for the main flow that would only taper just before the summer dearth anyway?
This hive is 2X the size of any hive I have run. I would think that without a queen, they are not swarming without her, and instead focus on making a new queen and by the time she is ready in a month the "swarm cutoff" should be past quelling their desire to swarm, right? I'm sure folks have tried this, does it work?
Thanks,
MP