I added a queen excluder to the new brood box and carefully placed the supers back on top. I’ll blame it on the heat, but I may need to visit Specsavers … I’d missed these in the previous inspection. The lower box had a handful of queen cells along the edge of a partially drawn foundationless frame. I put her on the frame she occupied back into the new empty brood box in the shed. The upper box contained the queen … above the queen excluder.
I took the double brood box outside 9, separated the two boxes and went through them carefully. I removed the supers and put them to the side. I assembled a new floor and brood box with 10 mixed frames 8 and substituted this for the original floor and double brood box. For example, the classic Pagden artificial swarm.ĭespite the fact that this colony had swarmed 7, if I could find the queen I could divide the colony like a Pagden artificial swarm and (hopefully) rescue the situation. Swarm control usually refers to a hive manipulation that prevents the colony from swarming.
#Swarm queen steam how to
I therefore expected to find both a queen and one or more queen cells in the box … and I needed to quickly make a decision about how to resolve the situation. They’d presumably swarmed because I’d missed a queen cell. I assumed the queen was somewhere in the double brood box, either because she was clipped and had returned there or because she was trapped above the queen excluder. What’s (probably) in the box?īy now I could make a fair guess at what had happened.
An artificial version forms the commercial ‘swarm lure’ you can buy. It is left as an attractant by honey bees on nectar-rich flowers and – when produced by fanning bees at the hive entrance – it is usually a good indication that the queen is inside. The Nasonov pheromone is a mix of terpenoids that attracts workers. Each was facing the entrance with the abdomen pointing up and away from the hive and the Nasanov gland exposed at the tip of the abdomen. However, there were a number of bees fanning busily at the hive entrance.
#Swarm queen steam full
obviously a different hive as I had my hands full with the swarm. “Oh no they’re not … I checked them a couple of days ago and all was well”, I replied smugly.īut of course I visited the apiary to check anyway.īees fanning at the hive entrance. Two days later my PhD student calls me from the apiary to tell me that colony #6 is swarming. I packed up, returned home and slaked my thirst. I decided to pop a queen includer excluder between the brood boxes with the intention of returning 3-4 days later to look for eggs as an indicator of where the queen was. I did find eggs, so I knew she was present (or had been 2-3 days ago) and there were no obvious signs of swarm preparation. The colony was very busy, but the queen definitely still had space to lay. With sweat stinging my eyes and dripping off my nose onto the inside of the veil I could barely see the comb, let alone the queen.
However, after more than an hour in stifling conditions I was struggling and starting to hallucinate about ice cold beer. The double brood box was bulging with bees with at least 18 frames of brood in all stages.Īt the beginning of the afternoon I’d intended to find the queen and prepare the box to be split once the flow was over (any day now). This had been strong from the start of the season and was now probably the strongest hive in the apiary.
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