We had 2 hives that over wintered very nicely. This is our second year beekeeping. They started building brood and by middle of April I knew we were going to really have to work to prevent them from swarming. We added bars on the end of the brood and also in the middle of the honey. By end of April, the drew out the comb on the bars we added and started filling the honey section as well.
First week in May I split the strongest of the 2 hives and took out 2 nucs. We did not want more top bar hives so we basically did a cutout into foundation less Langstroth frames. It was a lot of work and I am not sure that we want to do that again.
The second top bar hive was about 3/4 full. We went through it and took out the capped queen cells and a few frames of brood. We obviously missed some or did not take out enough brood as today the hive swarmed. We happen to be home and saw it as they were leaving the hive. They flew to a nearby swarm trap and we put the swarm into a nuc.
So what should we have done different to prevent the swarms? Seems like a strong over wintered top bar hive is very difficult to avoid swarming.
First week in May I split the strongest of the 2 hives and took out 2 nucs. We did not want more top bar hives so we basically did a cutout into foundation less Langstroth frames. It was a lot of work and I am not sure that we want to do that again.
The second top bar hive was about 3/4 full. We went through it and took out the capped queen cells and a few frames of brood. We obviously missed some or did not take out enough brood as today the hive swarmed. We happen to be home and saw it as they were leaving the hive. They flew to a nearby swarm trap and we put the swarm into a nuc.
So what should we have done different to prevent the swarms? Seems like a strong over wintered top bar hive is very difficult to avoid swarming.
