Vertical Artificial Swarm

At last the brood boxes are brimming with bees and there's more in the comb waiting to emerge. When worker bees start hatching numbers increase exponentially. This means that a colony that was looking rather weak can quite quickly get congested and when colonies are congested they're more likely to swarm.

Healthy brood

Burr comb between frame tops, think they're short of space.

Before bees swarm they'll start making a new queen and by the time she hatches the old queen will have done one with a load of your favourite workers. If the beekeeper is vigilant enough and has good enough eyesight he or she should be able to spot queen cells being made during regular inspections and take steps to minimise the risk of swarming. Initially the bees make what's called a 'play cup' or 'queen cup' a round structure sticking out of the comb designed hold an egg horizontally as opposed to stuck to the vertical back wall of a normal cell in the comb.

Empty cup

Finding one of these cups isn't always a sign of imminent swarming. The bees make them and don't always use them hence the name 'play' cups. Sometimes the bees will put and egg into one, then later they'll pull it out and put it somewhere else. I don't know why they do that and have my doubts that anyone else does either -although I suspect they do it just to worry beekeepers. If one of these cells has a hatched larvae swimming in royal jelly in it then you know for sure the bees are making a new queen. If it's half way up the comb like the play cup in the image above it's a supersedure cell meaning the bees are raising a new queen to replace the existing one, if it's at the bottom of the comb it's a swarm queen and half your workforce is looking to abscond. I found two cups at the bottom of a frame in hive1 and  2 in the middle of comb on Hive2. Perhaps Hive1 are thinking about swarming and Hive2 are thinking of revolution.

There's different ways to reduce swarming, you can give the bees more space by adding supers or a second brood box, some people use a second queen excluder below the brood box to stop queens leaving or clip the queen's wings to stop her flying. I've already given both colonies supers but they're not using them just yet, probably dont want to squeeze through the queen excluder.

Whilst those measure should reduce likelihood of swarming the most important method is to make the bees think they've already swarmed. There's different ways to create an artificial swarm and they generally involve splitting a colony. I decided to do a vertical artificial swarm because it means you still have the same number of hives whereas other methods mean making up more hives and I don't have any spare roofs or the space for another two complete hives anyway - plus there was a Snelgrove board included with my original hive.

Snelgrove was a jolly clever bekeeper and entemologist from Somerset. In 1934 his book Swarming Its Control And Prevention was published. It's since been republished fifteen times, most recently in 1998. I haven't read it but there's a good article about it and Snelgrove's technique here. Apparently he'd based his technique on a theory of swarming that was incorrect, despite that his technique was and remains effective and is still in use to this day. His method uses a piece of kit named after it's inventor. The Snelgrove board is, unsurprisingly, a board. It has a square hole in the middle covered by a metal mesh on on each side, and has six doors in the edge arranged in three pairs above and below the board. A photo would make it a lot clearer but I didn't think to take one before I stuck it in the hive this afternoon.

The artificial swarm needs a second brood box and enough frames to fill it and the Snelgrove Board. I'd made a couple of brood boxes previously and a few spare deep frames to go in it and bit's of frames. Just had to make up 7 new frames using a mix of old stuff I'd had sitting about and new gubbins I'd ordered in. Recently a neighbour flogged me a Black & Decker workmate WM825, she'd had it sat in the box unopened for about a year. It's bit Hank Hill and but made assembling the frames easier and I managed to avoid pushing any nails into my thumb this time.

Knocking some frames together

The short version of Snelgrove's artificial swarm technique as I understand it is you take all but two frames from the brood box and put them into a new brood box leaving the queen in the old box with some workers and replace the removed frames with undrawn foundation. The other brood box with it's frames of brood, eggs and worker bees goes on top of the brood box and any supers that are in place seperated by the Snelgrove board. The doors are then opened and closed in sequence over the following ten days to filter forager bees back into the box below. When the door is opened any mature foragers flying out of it will return to the hive entrance they're already used to at the bottom of the box so after a little time all the mature foragers should drift into the bottom brood box where the queen is.

Foragers leaving the side entrance of the Snelgrove Board

The queen and older workers find themselves in a suddenly roomy area with no young bees and very little stores which is pretty much how they would be if they'ed just swarmed, whilst the young bees find themselves with brood, eggs and food stores but no queen or mature foragers which again is how they would be if their Queen had just swarmed. The older bees and queen go about the business of rebuilding  and replenshing new comb whilst the younger bees get a wriggle on and start making themselves a new queen. Later on you can either separate the boxes into two different colonies or remove one of the queens and reunite both boxes to make one stronger colony with a younger queen.

Hive1 with Snelgrove Board and second brood box above the super

Well that's the theory anyway. Unfortunately I couldn't find the queen of Hive1 at all today so I pulled out the frames I wanted making sure the queen wasn't on any of them so hopefully she's still in the original box. I hope the bees do what I'm expecting but they don't always.

I also inspected the other hives today. The swarm I caught are doing well I'm thinking I may build them into a third colony instead of trying to keep them in a nucleus, I managed to locate and mark the queen last week, she's layaing plenty of eggs so the nuc may be full in a few weekds time. The bees in Hive2 are a little tetchy at the moment so I'm thinking I might try and requeen them with a little royalty from Hive1 if things go to plan. Of course that's a pretty big 'if'. I've given both hives supers but so far neither one is making any use of them, to try and encourage them in Hive2 I rubbed some unripe hiney from burr comb on the frame tops. Hopefully that should get their attention.