Demaree Method of Swarm Control

After last years rather unsuccessful attempt at swarm control using the Snelgrove Method this year I decided to try the Demaree Method on Hive1 this year. It seems a fairly simple method of swarm control and lets all the bees in the hive continue to work on the same honey crop.

The basis of swarm control is to make the bees think they've already swarmed. A swarm that's left a colony to start anew consists of a Queen Bee and a cadre of mature forager bees, no young bees and no brood. So if we can remove the brood and young bees they might just fall for it. The Demaree Method was first published in an article by George Demaree in an 1884 edition of The American Bee Journal. Here's the method broken down as I understand it:

Equipment:
Existing bee hive with Queen Excluder, Super(s), lots of bees etc
Brood box with full compliment of frames and foundation.

Method
1. Remove existing hive from hive floor and place the new brood box in it's place.
2. Remove the middle frame from the new brood box.
3. Locate the Queen Bee in the old brood box, place that frame in the middle of the new brood box.
4. Put Queen excluder over new brood box, replace the supers.
5. Place old brood box on top of Super(s)
6. Push the frames in the old brood box together and pop the spare new frame in at one end.
7. Put the crownboard and roof back on.

What should happen is the young bees will continue to tend the brood in the old brood box but with the queen will be unable to get through the excluder to lay any more eggs in it after 21 days there should be no brood in it at all. Meanwhile foraging bees will climb down from the old brood box to go foraging and on their return to the new brood box where the queen is should remain there. As there's new foundation they should start drawing it out and making new comb similar to what they'ed do if they had just moved to a new cavity.

The young bees in the old box at the top of the hive may decide to make some new queens if they think they've lost the old one and some sort of division board can be used to turn them into a separate colony if required or you can just reunite them down later.

Locating the Queen in Hive1 took me absolutely ages. She kept hiding away. I separated the the combs into pairs to limit where she could be but in the end had to search through the frames about 3 times before I located her. I then transferred her frame into the centre of the new brood box and popped the empty new frame into the old box.

You may be able to work out which is the old frame in here.

I then plonked the Queen Excluder back on and the Super which the bees are working on in earnest.

Working in the Super.

I then put the old brood box on top of the super. I actually want to raise some new Queens from this hive so I decided to try a method of tricking the workers into creating queens. The technique is called 'notching' which is pretty much all the beekeeper needs to do. Using a hive tool the beekeeper presses in the bottom cell walls of some cells with very young brood or eggs -that's the 'notch'. The workers hopeful misinterpret these damaged cells as vertically oriented queen cells and start flooding them with royal jelly to make the new Queens. I've not tried it before but fingers crossed. The current Queens of Hive 1 and 2 are a couple of years old now so due to be replaced.

Hive after Demaree Method

Whilst in the Hive I also cut out the sacrificial drone brood to keep varroa levels down. The comb was only about a third covered with capped drone brood but it should still make a serious dent in varroa numbers.

Drone brood, sacrificed for the greater good.