🚨 Red Alert. Swarm Prep!
My production hive, the hive that was going to leave us swimming in honey is prepping to swarm. Reflecting on this I realized that this may of been my fault.
Queen Age: 1 Year
Hive Age: 1 Year
Breed: Saskatraz
Around 10 days ago I thought it would be a good idea to give a strong hive some empty frames so that I could gain new comb. As a beekeeper I can always use new comb. This is where I went wrong. I swapped out a draw out comb for an empty one right in the middle of a honey flow. Comb was gone and now the queen and resources are competing for space. The hive is slamming so I'm not surprised the that the bees when into swarm mode.
Hive's the go into swarm mode can swarm in as little as 7 days.
The swarm process starts when the hive starts to build a queen cell, but this isn't enough to start a swarm. The egg needs to populated with an egg hence commencing the raising of a new queen. As soon as the queen cell is capped the queen and 75% of the work force is out to greener pastures.
When checking bees during swarm season it's all about timing. If you check the hive every 10 days you're risking losing half of your bees to a swarm. Swarms are not a bad thing, it's a bummer to lose half of you bees. If you can catch them while they're charging a queen cell (queen cell with an egg + royal jelly) you have an I'm opportunity to grow the bee yard.
The Artificial Swarm
My strategy is to stage an artificial swarm. My goal, find the queen and move here to a new box and make it seem like the queen flew the coup. This "swarm" will put the hive into raise a new queen mode. If I provide the old queen with enough bees and resources it's my hope that it'll be slamming by winter time.
Swarms give you an opportunity to split a hive into many and grow your bee yard. This is self sustainability in beekeeping. A swarm is an unexpected gift of queen cells to start new colonies. To be successful with swarms we just need to be watching.