About once a week, check each hive and determine where the bees are working. If one colony is working in their third and top super and another colony is only working in the bottom of three supers, shift the supers around. This is sometimes called equalizing the supers. Move a super from where it is not being used to a hive where it will be used. Add another super when the bees begin working in the top super. If the super to be added is drawn comb, it may be placed on top of the other supers. If the super to be added is foundation, it should be placed above the queen excluder and below all other extracting or foundation supers. Toward the end of the month, add an additional super only after the last super added is mostly capped. When the nectar flow stops, remove any unused supers of foundation. This will prevent the bees from chewing and damaging the new foundation, as they will do, when no nectar is available.
If the supers of new foundation are to be used for comb honey, then these supers should be removed as soon as all frames are fully capped. If left on the hives, the combs will become travel-stained as the bees walk over the dark brood combs and then track pollen and propolis onto the new white cappings.
Before any supers of comb honey are removed, check and make sure that all cells are capped. If all cells are not fully capped, delay the removal a few days. Unsealed cells may contain unripe honey with high moisture and could cause the honey to ferment if removed.
Once a super of comb honey is removed from the hive, put it in a plastic airtight bag and place it in a freezer for two or three days. The plastic bag prevents moisture from forming on the honeycomb while the exposure to the low temperature of 0°F in the freezer will kill all stages of the wax moth. The super of comb honey can then be removed or it may be stored in the freezer for several months. When the super is removed from the freezer, the honey should be allowed to thaw at room temperature before the plastic bag is opened.
Last month I cited an article written in 1992 by Richard Taylor where he identified the cause of swarming. In 1995, Richard Taylor again addressed that same subject and I will let his words explain the reason for it being repeated. "The basic cause of swarming I have mentioned many times, but it is still so insufficiently appreciated that it bears repeating. The one thing which, more than anything else, precipitates swarming is congestion of the BROOD nest. It is not congestion, that is, overpopulation, of the hive itself. When the hive gets so full of brood, pollen and honey that the queen can find no combs in which to lay, then the bees build queen cells, no matter what precautions you have taken. At the same time, there are other factors, such as the age of the queen, so really effective swarm control involves more than just keeping an open brood nest."
Supering at the right time can also have an impact on swarming. Dr. Taylor had this to say on the subject of supering. "Right now I am making the point that if you are late supering, then you are going to get swarms, because that nectar is going to go into brood combs and make them unavailable to the queen for egg laying."
Last year during the 2005 honey flow; I decided to keep an "open brood nest" in all 19 of my overwintered colonies to test Dr. Taylor's idea of swarm control. This effort started around the middle of April. The first step in each of these checks was to find and cage the queen. The next step was to remove all frames with brood, except one. Their single brood chamber was then filled back with empty but drawn frames and the one frame of brood in the center. The queen was then released on the single brood frame. The queen excluder, "their super" and two extracting supers were placed, in that order, on top of the brood chamber.
As the brood frames were removed, most of the bees were shaken or brushed off but that depended on the strength of the colony receiving the brood frames. Near the end of this first round of checks, a few of the stronger colonies had to be used to hold the extra brood frames. Some of the hives were holding four and five deep supers of brood frames. Later as more bees emerged, new colonies were started by using queens from overwintered nucs thus relieving the problem of what to do with all of the extra brood frames.
Between the 2nd and 3rd week after completing the first round of checks, all hives were again checked. This series of checks involved removing all of the supers, now quite heavy with fresh honey, and then searching brood chambers packed with bees looking for the queen. During this second check only three or four frames with brood were removed from the center of the brood nest. Lifting the supers off and back on again and searching for the queen in each colony was quite labor intensive, time consuming and took more than a week to complete. As the honey flow came to an end, I am satisfied that none of my colonies had swarmed.
A couple of weeks after the checks had stopped and the honey flow was over, one colony did swarm. This swarm was a small one and it too, most likely, could have been prevented if a third check had been made to keep an "open brood nest" in each of the colonies.
As I noted in the November 2005 news article for the Alamance County Beekeepers Newsletter, this limited test of Dr. Taylor's "open brood nest" is a worthy idea in controlling swarming and it is good to know but the process is quite involved and is too time consuming to be of any practical value to the average beekeeper.
If you find that one of your strong colonies has somehow slipped through your checks and has begun swarm preparations, you may want to try a procedure known as shook swarming. In this procedure, a swarm is artificially created by shaking all of the bees from the combs of a strong colony and crowding them into shallow supers of foundation only. It is a procedure used primarily in making comb honey but I have used this method with great success to absolutely stop a swarm.
To create a shook swarm, proceed as follows: Move the parent colony to one side. Locate and cage the queen. Place a new bottom board on the original location and add a shallow super with nine frames of foundation and one frame of brood. Check and make sure there are no queen cells on this one frame of brood. This shallow super will serve as the new brood chamber. Upon this shallow super, place a queen excluder and then one or two shallow supers of foundation. Use an inverted hive cover and support it in front of the newly formed hive. This hive cover will provide a convenient platform, onto which the bees can be shaken, plus it will serve as an easy walkway up to the entrance of the new hive. Place the caged queen on the bottom board near the entrance and shake all of the bees from each of the frames of the original hive on to this inverted hive cover. After all of the bees have been shaken from the original hive, push the queen cage in the bottom entrance with the screened side up and position it near the frame of brood. Smoke the bees occasionally to keep them moving instead of clustering at the entrance. Place all of the brood frames and super frames on other hives but make sure the colony receiving the frames have enough bees to care for the added brood. It is also suggested that all of these frames be checked for queen cells and those that are found be torn down.
If a large number of the bees are still clustered on the front of the hive, after they have begun to work the next day, then add another super of foundation. The queen can be released in a couple of days after they have started drawing comb in the bottom super which, as stated above, is their new brood chamber. I also recommend that you remove the frame of brood at this time and replace it with a frame of new foundation.
This is a good way to prevent a swarm, make more honey and end up with some beautiful extracting combs. The procedure is very labor intensive though. The labor involved in the initial setup was described above but more labor is also involved later. At the end of the nectar flow, the original hive body will need to be returned to this colony and the shallow super brood chamber should be moved above the queen excluder. kgp
Updated:
11-17-09