I agree. Change where you get your queens from. A good breeder of queens will use lack of swarming as a criteria for choosing the queen mothers used for raising queens. Bees caught as swarms are more swarmy. Bees caught as swarms year after year are even more swarmy. Also, different breeds of bees are more swarmy than others, although maybe not as much now as used to be from the breeders of different lines of bees choose queen mothers that don't have a history of swarming in their background. Overly swarmy bees are slowly being bred out by at least some breeders.If your bees are that swarmy you may have bad genetics.
Really no need to do a "significant" spring split. When the hives are built up and you sense that they could soon be initiating swarm preparations just remove the queen with a few frames and some bees - small split. It will keep the main hive busy for a while raising a new queen and could get you past the prime reproductive swarm period.The whole experience made me seriously doubt the feasibility of attempting to control swarming without performing a significant spring split.
The whole experience made me seriously doubt the feasibility of attempting to control swarming without performing a significant spring split.
SWARMING
ITS CONTROL AND PREVENTION by L. E. Snelgrove. You can download a free PDF.
It was confusing to me at first, but after physically employing them it all made sense. :doh:
Sorry, no link.
Alex
This too!A quick and nasty method that works in these cases, is find the queen and pinch her, plus kill all but 2 of the queen cells.
Sometimes, with productive queens, just one split once a year isn’t enough especially with multiple or extended flows.Is it feasible, or at least realistic to expect to prevent swarming without performing a spring split?
This year in my apiary, swarming was a major issue. I noticed that even hives that I took multiple frames of brood, STILL swarmed.
To my dismay, I even found that colonies that had swarmed in June, decided to swarm AGAIN in mid August
When I downloaded the PDF, I changed the name of the shortcut on my desktop, and for some reason I lost the direct link. That was the first time that has happened. I must have done something wrong. Oh, well.The Snelgrove double screen division board certainly has worked well for me in regards to swarming and handily takes care of queen rearing. I put them on about the time drones are flying. Not much swarming before then. Snelgroves timing to put them on in England is just about bang on for me too in N. Ontario.
I could not quickly come up with the Pdf. of his booklet but it is available.
The Drones won't be ale to come and go, but I have heard people say they do that.What if you just kept a queen excluder over the entrance?
I was referring to the original, but the one at your link looks easier to follow.they put the queen on a diet before they swarm (so she can fly) and she can get through an excluder
is this the pdf folks referred too?
http://www.eastdevonbk.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Snelgrove-April-28th.pdf
It is not Snelgroves original words but it covers the basics. Snelgrove goes into a bit more detail on why it works but his language is a bit stilted and unusual by todays standards of English in N. America.they put the queen on a diet before they swarm (so she can fly) and she can get through an excluder
is this the pdf folks referred too?
http://www.eastdevonbk.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Snelgrove-April-28th.pdf