Keeping Things Together

Claire Waring discusses methods of swarm control

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AIthough this varies over the country, May and June are still the main swarming months, so you need to be ready to take steps to control colonies showing swarm preparations.

Think of the colony as being composed of three parts: the queen, the brood and nurse bees, and the flying bees. All swarm control methods consist of separating one of these from the other two. Like anything else, swarm control is not difficult when you understand the process. However, what you also have to realise is that just doing the separation is not enough. You will also need to intervene at one or two points. This is where you need to remember the development times for the queen and the workers. Whatever steps you take, the individual life cycles will continue.

If you remove the queen, the swarm will not leave the hive. 'Great,' you say. However, there are developing queen cells still in the colony. If you do not reduce these to one after they are sealed, the first virgin queen will emerge and swarm out of the hive, not only with the bees that would have accompanied her if she led an afterswarm, but also all the bees that would have gone with the original queen in the prime swarm. Rather than controlling swarming, you will be in a worse position, having lost even more bees. As the other virgin queens emerge, they are likely to lead out afterswarms so your colony will be depleted even further until the workers 'decide' that enough is enough and kill all but one of the remaining virgins in their cells.

If there is only one sealed cell, the virgin that emerges will not leave with a swarm. When she matures, she will fly out to a drone congregation area to mate and return to head the colony.

THE NUCLEUS METHOD