Preventing Afterswarms

Claire Waring describes steps to stop casting if you have lost the prime swarm

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We have considered how to control swarms and what is involved in catching and hiving a swarm. Of course, we all know that swarms have always come from someone else’s bees but, inevitably, it will happen in one of your colonies. The important thing then is to make sure that you don’t lose any more bees in an afterswarm or cast.

THE SITUATION IN THE HIVE

When the colony has swarmed, what remains is queenless but it contains a potential replacement in the form of queen cells.

Option 1 is to do nothing. The first virgin queen to hatch will leave the hive with about half of the remaining bees in an afterswarm. This will be repeated as subsequent virgins emerge until the colony ‘decides’ that to lose any more bees will deplete it to a point where it will struggle to survive. At this point, the next virgin that hatches will visit the other queen cells and sting the occupants to death through the cell wall. She and/or the workers will then tear down the cells.

The colony is then in a position where its survival depends on this queen mating successfully, returning to the hive and starting to lay. This seems a rather risky way of going about things as all the colony’s eggs are in one basket so to speak, but that’s the way things are!

The prime (first) swarm leaves round about the time the first queen cell is sealed. That means the first virgin will hatch seven days later. Consider an egg laid just before the old queen departs. When the first virgin hatches, that larva will be four days old, too old to be raised as a queen. Hence, if the virgin is lost or fails to mate properly, the colony is hopelessly queenless and, without intervention from the beekeeper, is doomed. Don’t panic! The majority of virgin queens mate successfully. However, it is worth understanding the sequence and being prepared for the one that doesn’t.

PREVENTING AFTERSWARMS