# Checkerboard experiment swarmed.



## minz (Jan 15, 2011)

Finally had enough drawn shallows to checkerboard this last winter, right to the date of apples of WW. I thought I had something since the hive did not swarm when the others did (unusually warm spring). I was torn because the hive was so weak through the spring. Did an inspection this last week and found two superseder cells on different shallow frames so put one in a Queen castle just in case. 
Bees swarmed on me today. Got done working the night shift this week and was weeding my garden when the chickens and dogs started running around. Cool picture though, they set up in the grapes on one of the skulls.
http://s1141.photobucket.com/user/6minz/media/skullswarm_zpsed86ac57.jpg.html
Worst swarming year for me. Every single one of my overwinter hives swarmed. The main flow is on 4 weeks early and we are breaking warm weather records.


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## praxis178 (Dec 26, 2012)

Cool picture! One could almost say they really are using their head..... <insert the crickets here>

So they all swarmed, if you caught all of them then you doubled your colony count, that's cool! Being winter over here in Australia, I'm gearing up for spring when I'm hoping to see my two hives swarm so I can up my holdings..... Have also put out the word that I'll come collect swarms too ;-)


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

We are also having record heat. Yesterday was the earliest date for us to reach 100 degrees in our history. We have not had any real freezing weather since March 1st. My bees have been building up since then. I am not sure anything would have prevented bees from swarming. The good news is I have managed to gather 7 swarms. Two of them huge ones that immediately went into a 10 frame box with a med on it. In addition we also got 2 cut outs. For the most part I no longer do cut outs. way to many easier ways to get bees.


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## VolunteerK9 (Aug 19, 2011)

Daniel Y said:


> way to many easier ways to get bees.


I'm right there with you. When I first got into bees I'd waste a lot of gas and spend half a day on a cut out that would maybe fill a 5 frame nuc (on a good day). Not anymore.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

minz, how many shallows did you have above the deep, and were the bees working all the way up to the top box?


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## minz (Jan 15, 2011)

I had two shallows that overwintered full of honey, I CB’s them and had to use some partially drawn comb I put on the outside edge because they did not eat enough to get enough empty. I had a partially drawn medium and a medium of foundation on top of that. They were not working the medium of foundation so I pulled it. So DSSM when they went. With brood and QC in the first shallow. Yes they seemed to be working the first medium.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

similar situation here minz. i too didn't have quite enough drawn comb to keep them moving up in a few of my hives and they swarmed.

i have only medium supers and haven't quite got to the point of having three drawn supers per hive to properly checkerboard with in late winter.

(walt sets his up in late february with a shallow full of honey above the deep and two more shallows checkerboarded with honey/empty drawn comb above the full one for a total of three)

i leave one medium of honey above the single deep for overwintering. because of the late spring this year that one medium was almost empty when the first flows started.

so i started the spring with virtually no capped honey overhead, and two to three medium supers of empty drawn comb per hive. 

i thought i had it made for swarm prevention, and i managed to keep about half of my hives from swarming, but the other half taught me a thing or two.

one hive in particular never got out of the deep even though it had two empty supers of drawn comb above it. i thought they were just a little slow to move up, but they were the first ones to swarm this year.

another got into the first super, but ignored the second, and swarmed.

the ones i got to move up into the second and third stayed.

i think next year i will try to keep them moving up by bringing a frame or two up to the next box when the top box of the working level gets full of bees.


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