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Bees And Honey - Part 7

Controlling swarms and making increase A colony that has produced queen cells or even fully developed queens does not necessarily have to swarm. Many will kill these queens or queen cells, giving up the whole process of swarming. In some colonies, of course, the new queens will supersede | Controlling swarms and making increase A colony that has produced queen cells or even fully developed queens does not necessarily have to swarm. Many will kill these queens or queen cells giving up the whole process of swarming. In some colonies of course the new queens will supersede but this usually happens either in the beginning or more generally at the end of the active season. In the middle of the year colonies usually either swarm or give up the whole idea. No one as yet has been able to discover a method of differentiating between the colonies which will swarm and those which won t. The practical beekeeper therefore equates summer queen cell production with swarming and deals with the colonies from this angle. I shall continue to use the normal beekeeping parlance and write of a colony making queen cells as a swarming colony although the whole idea of this chapter is to help you prevent the colony actually coming out of the hive as a swarm. Swarm prevention or delay As the production of queen cells is mainly if not entirely controlled by the age of the queen and the congestion of the colony attention to these two factors will do much to prevent or postpone the start of swarming. The age of queens should be kept to a minimum consistent with value of the queens and their economic length of life I would suggest they should not exceed two full seasons in large production colonies. They should also come from a strain which is not prone to swarming. This will be difficult for the beginner as normally obtainable queens carry no information on their characteristics at all it is a long-term objective to keep in mind when breeding your own see Chapter 8. Congestion can be prevented by correct use of supers and ensuring the bees take up as rapidly as possible the extra room given them by encouraging them into the super see page 128 . Shading colonies from direct mid-day sunshine is said to hold swarming back but it is also said to reduce the rate of spring build-up. .