Beesource Beekeeping Forums banner

Need advice on booming swarm

1047 Views 5 Replies 5 Participants Last post by  Cottonwood
2
Tree Plant Plant community Woody plant Shrubland
On May 13 th I captured a large swarm that had gathered on o low lying tree. The swarm was around 10 to 12 pounds in size. I hived it in three medium 8 frame boxes with a mix of new foundation and foundationless frames. I placed nine frames per box to start. I did not feed the swarm at all. It adapted well and drew out the 27 frames so I added two more boxes of foundation only. They filled and drew out these frames so I added another box of foundation only.

Flash forward to today. I planned to pull some frames of capped honey so I could extract and return them to the hive so they will continue to have room to store nectar/ honey and not back fill the brood nest. I do not have any drawn frames available to give the . When I when I went in today, I have brood in all six boxes and she has laid in every frame including those with honey. Out of the 51 frames in the hive there are eggs/larva or brood in all but four frames. There are lots of drones and there were no active swarm cells that I could locate.

Here are my questions
What is the best way to have the queen stop laying in the upper boxes so I can get some frames to harvest?
I only have foundation so if I put an excluder on will they draw out the frames?
Should I wait until I get some swarm cells to do a split?

Any and all constructive suggestions would be appreciated. Bee Honeybee Beehive Pollinator Insect
See less See more
1 - 6 of 6 Posts
Remove the queen and do a split with her, maybe two. Leave the hive queenless and add modernized.
Some queens just make excluders mandatory! (like So FL bees!) Use some frames of honey above the QE as a lure. Put those with the least amount of brood up...no drone brood, because the drones won't be able to exit. In a hive that sounds like it's booming as well as it is, as long as there is still a flow, crossing the QE shouldn't be much of an issue. You might need a step ladder soon, though! lol!

You can certainly do a split...just make sure the hive without the queen has EGGS...not just brood....EGGS. Looks to be the perfect candidate for a split...or two. Nice job bees!
Split....I would definitely want daughter queens from that stock.
You could try putting another box with foundation two boxes down with a bee escape on top of the empty box. When the bees are mostly cleared out you pull out the bee escape and put on a QE. The quickest way is to shake off all the bees in the two boxes and put on a QE. Cull all the drone brood.
Thank you to those that have offered suggestions.

I decided to move the four honey frames with brood to the top of another hive where the queen has room and is staying down out of the honey supers. I figure they can benefit from the brood and should finish capping the small amount of uncapped honey(15%). I replaced the frames with foundation to see if they will keep drawing frames.
in a couple of days, I will remove the queen and some brood and place her in a new hive. When the queenless hive draws and caps queen cells, I will divide that hive into two.

A couple of questions.
I will need to keep all hives in the same yard, will this work?
Any suggestions or comments concerning the above plan?

This is my second year so I am entering uncharted waters and am open to constructive criticism that will help me.

Thanks
1 - 6 of 6 Posts
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top