# Shook Swarm Benefits



## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

The only benefit I can see to "shook swarming" is that it give the beekeeper an opportunity to treat for the varroa on the adult bees, and because there is no brood, the colony will have a healthy beginning.

A drawback is the colony will not build as fast as a division that includes brood. If shaken onto foundation you can get good comb drawn, but if the nectar flow is not on you must feed. If done at the start of the flow, and the colony is strong, all foundations should be drawn and some nectar stored for the bees. Trying to predict time to draw foundations and amount of nectar stored is just a coin toss, each location is different.

"Shook Swarming" is seldom used because it is not an efficient way to make divisions, or to control swarming and make surplus honey.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

it's a nice way to make a split when swarm preps are under way and you have queen cells started but the colony hasn't split itself yet. Set up a Taranov board and shake everything out in front of the original colony then place the remaining cluster with queen into a new box.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

RichardsonTX said:


> Why aren't more people using it for increase instead of splits?


How do you get an increase if you shake the entire hive into new equipment?


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

RichardsonTX said:


> Why aren't more people using it for increase instead of splits?
> What are some other discussion points about shook swarms for increase?


shook swarming is still a method used and used by many. 
Read Doolittle (1908) to find out the particulars.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

This "Taranov swarm" drew out 19 deep frames (I gave them one frame of eggs) in two weeks (shook July 11th). I fed them two gallons of 1:1 when I hived them and our flow was crazy enough that they took care of the rest. Drew a medium out at some point as well. Never made squat for honey... they instead liked bees and wax apparently. The daughter queen was much more agreeable. The shook queen swarmed sometime in September and virgin never got mated. They were a swarmy bunch and also kept queen cells around all the time... a trait that I am not a fan of.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

Acebird said:


> How do you get an increase if you shake the entire hive into new equipment?



old queen and young bees that have never flown before go into the new box, all the capped brood and forragers and a queen cell stay behind. here is a long but in dept explanation of the process using a teranov board.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETgWMMZr4So



some folks just shake directly into a new box, concept is the same


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

RichardsonTX said:


> What are the benefits of creating new colonies with shook swarms instead of nucleus colonies? drawbacks?


I suppose it will make you happy if you like work. In the video he plays it as no work and he says he does it because he doesn't have any time to work the bees.:scratch: Are you kidding me? It took over and hour. I think I will just stick to dealing the deck. Ten minutes tops and walk away. It takes me more time to get ready putting on the suit and lighting the smoker.


Harley Craig said:


> old queen and young bees that have never flown before go into the new box, all the capped brood and forragers and a queen cell stay behind. here is a long but in dept explanation of the process using a teranov board.


I read about this on Cushmans site. It made me tired. It is good seeing it in video format though, thanks.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

" Are you kidding me? It took over and hour. I think I will just stick to dealing the deck."......................

it only took him that long in the video because he stopped a cajillion times to explain what he was doing because he was teaching a class. If you are dealing the deck when they are getting ready to swarm you have got to find your queen, sometimes that can take hrs. With this method you just shake everything out and put it back together. You can do a very large hive in under 10 min if you wanted to.


if you are making a walkaway split when they are not prime to swarm, dealing the deck is probably your better option. This option is good for when you haven't had time to work the bees and catch them in the nick of time.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Harley Craig said:


> This option is good for when you haven't had time to work the bees and catch them in the nick of time.


Isn't the hive without the queen still going to swarm?


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## TWall (May 19, 2010)

It can be used with comb honey production. 

To date I have never done it. Who knows what the future holds.

Tom


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

Acebird said:


> Isn't the hive without the queen still going to swarm?



no, it's the young un-employed bees ripe for wax making that leave with the swarm, and you shake them all out.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Harley Craig said:


> You can do a very large hive in under 10 min if you wanted to.


I did a double deep in right around 20 minutes and that was actively looking for the queen on each frame. Had I just shaken them I would have had the same result in significantly less time. 10 minutes is probably about right. 
I never found her until I saw her walk across the inner cover and down into the new hive so...

Here's the fast motion version (4 minutes): 





Splitting frames has left hives strong enough that they still want to swarm. The "Taranov" method certainly weakened the mother hive enough that they wouldn't swarm. It took more bees than I ever would have imagined doing so on my own by just swapping frames and shaking extra bees. 
I was 'inspired' enough that later in the season (around late August) when another hive wanted to swarm I hopped in my car and drove out before work. Found the queen, moved her frame that had a little bit of brood on it over into a 5 frame nuc and a frame of food too. Shook the entirety of the hive into the nuc, threw foundation to fill + another 5 frame deep on top (foundation), and gave them a gallon of food. No letting them cluster or anything. No new yard. I didn't even shut my car off. 15 minutes tops including all the monkeying around with boxes and feed and getting suited up.

Undoubtedly there was more drift back to the original colony than if I were to move the hive. But for the most part, the older bees go back and the younger ones stay. That queen and her bees are overwintering happily in a 5/5 nuc still sitting adjacent to the original "mother" colony. All or nearly all of the brood stays so that the original side gets stronger daily as they finish rearing their queen and allow her to mate.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Harley Craig said:


> no, it's the young un-employed bees ripe for wax making that leave with the swarm, and you shake them all out.


Really, seems like we have a difference of opinion between beeks. LOL 
What I have read is that there is a full compliment of bees in a primary swarm. You would think that there would be a bunch of the old bees that would be loyal to the queen so that makes sense. These old bees bring in honey else the young bees can't make wax. Then there are the idol young bees that have nothing to do so who is going to miss them. And then there is the old queen still firing out eggs so a full gamete makes sense to me for a primary swarm.
Now just so I understand what you mean that this hive has gone to far and you are saving it in the nick of time, does that mean it has already started queen cells? If so it means you have to get rid of most of these queen cells in the queenless part, right? BTW to me this is a split as far as I am concerned. If I deal the deck I am going to end up with a very similar situation except the queen right side will have and abundance of foragers. If I wait a little while and let the dust settle which will tell me which half the queen ended up in I can do it again and the second split will discourage any urge of swarming and I end up with three hives.

It just made me laugh out loud how the guy said he didn't have time to work his bees and he suited up move three boxes, set up this board with white sheet, shook out all the frames and put them back in boxes at the original location. Supposing he was using all mediums so there would be 4 not three and put them in two stacks every other one. I think it would be a time saver for him. I would PM him if he was on Beesource.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

What are some other discussion points about shook swarms for increase? 

Last year at the Spring expansion phase the mites crashed my 2 strong hives.
I did a shook swarm to combine them all into one big hive. Because I was afraid
of the foul broods I took out all the drawn comb and broods. All bees were shook into
the foundation frames. The bees did recovered by choosing their strongest queen.
This may look like a decrease in the beginning but at the end I made 7 nucs out of this hive.
I don't understand why this method cannot prevent swarming? But surely it will make some
good drawn comb for my expansion the next season. When a hive is strong enough then I don't
think it matters much to do a split or a shook swarm. Eventually they will all recover given a strong
mated queen and enough time in the season.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

Acebird said:


> What I have read is that there is a full compliment of bees in a primary swarm.


Most of the swarms I've collected over the years have a much higher percentage of "young" bees. Sure, there will be bees of all ages in the mix but the majority are young bees. It's the most efficient way for a swarm to start from scratch building comb in their new home, most of the population will live much longer than the initial foragers in the swarm. When the swarm issues, where are most of the forager age bees? They are out foraging, and are not around when the swarm leaves. It happens very quickly, so all foragers that are out miss it.



Acebird said:


> And then there is the old queen still firing out eggs so a full gamete makes sense to me for a primary swarm.


Typically the queen will slim down and almost completely shut down egg laying prior to the swarm leaving. Once the swarm is re-established it takes a little time for her to get back up to speed. This timing works well in tandem with the building of new comb.



Acebird said:


> If I deal the deck I am going to end up with a very similar situation except the queen right side will have and abundance of foragers.


That is where you can sometimes run into problems with a dealing the deck type split. If the queen happens to still be at the old location after the split, with a hive full of young bees and a lot of foragers, they will probably continue their swarm plan. You haven't really stopped them, just reduced the number of bees that will be lost when they do swarm.


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## RichardsonTX (Jul 3, 2011)

Thanks for commenting everyone! I was hoping to learn if there were other beekeepers out there who use this process to manage their bees, how it works for them, and also maybe prompt others to do a little research out of curiosity. The simple way that it can be combined with swarm prevention management, hive increase, and health management is appealing to me. I read somewhere else in Beesource (I think it was, "Running two queen colonies") where a beekeeper takes all the brood frames out of his production hives to reduce the varroa population in those production hives, puts all the brood into a new hive in a different location, and then pulls brood off that hive until its dissolved to make several shook swarms with for increase for the year. It sounds like an interesting concept but would need to be done at just the right time to minimize interference with honey production and still provide enough time to build up winter stores.


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## orthoman (Feb 23, 2013)

Can anyone direct me to some resources - written mainly - on how to do / set up for a shook swarm? Hopefully, written in a thorough but concise manner with simple declarative sentences. Doolittle's run on sentences and older english are hard for me to follow.

I think I understand the process -- i.e. separating queen from brood and let the queenless hive raise a new queen -- but I would like to understand the mechanics better.

Thanks.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

orthoman said:


> Can anyone direct me to some resources - written mainly - on how to do / set up for a shook swarm? Hopefully, written in a thorough but concise manner with simple declarative sentences. Doolittle's run on sentences and older english are hard for me to follow.
> 
> I think I understand the process -- i.e. separating queen from brood and let the queenless hive raise a new queen -- but I would like to understand the mechanics better.
> 
> Thanks.



Doolittle shakes them back into their own hive for comb production. Basically he



#1 break hive down and set aside.
#2 place new bottom board in old hive location with empty box.
#3 place honey in bottom box in all slots except one this middle slot contains 1/4 - 1/2 frame of open brood too old to make a queen. then cover with a queen excluder.
#4 place bait comb above queen excluder with empty comb sections.
#5 shake every frame out on a ramp in front of the hive
#6 donate brood from this colony to colonies that need a boost. 


For this to work, the timing has to be perfect

They will think they swarmed and will be irritated by the honey down below and will move it up to the bait comb so the queen has room to lay, this will cause an " in hive flow" and cause them to pull and cap comb honey very quickly. If done at the wrong time with a big hive, they may want to try to swarm again, Done correctly the flow hits and they go into hoarding mode and will draw frames like crazy.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

orthoman


> Can anyone direct me to some resources - written mainly - on how to do / set up for a shook swarm? Hopefully, written in a thorough but concise manner with simple declarative sentences. Doolittle's run on sentences and older english are hard for me to follow.


You took the words right out of my mouth. I have read his book twice and was thinking of starting a thread and highlighting some portions of it and asking someone to explain to me what he is saying. 

I am expecially confused where he the visit before had put supers on top of the singles and then the visit where he moves the second supper full of honey with a quarter frame of brood down to its own bottom board and then supers that expecting the bees to move the honey up to his sections. I did not get what happened to the brood that was in the original single that was below the honey super and wondered if he left stuff out due to it already being comon knowlage (and I should make the leap) or his writing style was just being misunderstood by me. I realize his goal was for section honey comb but if I understood what he was saying some of it should work for general hive maintanance. I am looking for a beginner guide to something like he tried to write that tells you on visit one in march you look for this and add that and look for this. on visit two in april you do this because of this. I like the premise of his twelve visit management but will need a bit more understanding of what he is really saying. I am on page 26 of my third time through his book.

I am really glade you posed this question.
gww


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

orthoman said:


> Can anyone direct me to some resources - written mainly - on how to do / set up for a shook swarm? Hopefully, written in a thorough but concise manner with simple declarative sentences. Doolittle's run on sentences and older english are hard for me to follow.


For the "Taranov" side of things this is about the best source... just looking at the pictures should pretty much get you to where you need to be:
http://www.honeybeesuite.com/tag/taranov/

The caveat here is that Taranov is just a fancy name for one of the many flavors of a shook swarm. The link above in one of his posts about it gets down to the nitty gritty to the point of him using a tape measure to make sure his board is exactly 8" away... I don't believe that is necessary whatsoever.


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

Harley Craig said:


> Doolittle shakes them ..... If done at the wrong time with a big hive, they may want to try to swarm again, Done correctly the flow hits and they go into hoarding mode and will draw frames like crazy.


Doolittle removed all brood from the hive leaving only a 1/4-1/2 of one frame. They do not swarm under these circumstances.

The hive where the removed brood is placed may make swarm cells and these receiver hives need to be watched.


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## davpress (Mar 8, 2005)

I use shook swarm to produce comb honey
1 remove hive from its position
2 place clean bottom board in place of hive
3 medium box on bottom board
4 new foundation in new frames in box
5 queen excluder on box
6 3 suppers on top of queen excluder(comb honey foundation)
7 inner cover and top cover in place
8 place sheet , plywood on ground ramped up to entrance
9 take frames out of brood box and shake every bee off the frame on the sheet(looking for the queen)
10 continue till all bees have been emptied from initial brood box.
11 if you have 2 brood boxes, remove all bees from it also
12 if I see the queen, she gets a wing clipped
13 the queen must be a last summer queen, prime of her life
14 the field bees will be bringing necture to the newly established hive, the young bees will start building for the queen to lay.
with no brood to care for, the wax gets built quickly.
15 there ar so many bees, they wont all fit in the bottom box, so they will start working the supper immediatly
16 the existing brood is distributed to needy hives.
17 this must happen early in the necture flow,(plenty resources, plenty time to build comb, store honey

this is what I do, there are variations to this, it works for me in my area, nw ky

David


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

clyderoad said:


> Doolittle removed all brood from the hive leaving only a 1/4-1/2 of one frame. They do not swarm under these circumstances.
> 
> The hive where the removed brood is placed may make swarm cells and these receiver hives need to be watched.



Thanks, I corrected it, I was going off of memory. And good point about the other hives, if any one hive got too much resources you are correct it could entise them to swarm.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

So if you just want to increase your drawn comb frames, what is
the best method of using the shook swarm hive set up?


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## McBee7 (Dec 25, 2013)

Here is a flavor of "Shook Swarm" I call ---Fat Bee Man Alamode----
He claims it takes 3 minutes,,,,,but you end up with the queen and all the field bees in one box and brood frames with all the nurse bees in the other,,,Its a very simple way to basicly package out your hive to make it think it swarmed with the queen and the flying bees.....
https://youtu.be/6Px93qlq340

==McBee7==


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

that works, but obviously he doesn't count the amount of time it takes to find the queen LOL


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Why does he need to find the queen?
Obviously she is within the nurse bees cluster 
somewhere. Just give the forager bees a mated queen
or a queen cell on a drawn frame to start over again. 
In a few days you should see whether or not the old queen has laid
some eggs along with the nurse bees. Should be a fun experiment to
do other than the good o' boring hive split.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

because he said he put the queen and two frames of capped brood in the box in the original spot. The nurse bees were returning to just the brood to raise a new queen.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

My experience with rasing a good quality queen cell
is when there are many foragers bringing in the resources on
a flow. For this experiment I would put a graft cell or cells
into the foragers hive with a frame of nurse bees. This way
the cells will be bigger once they are cap and well fed too.
Yep, found my bee experiment for this season to try.
The old queen will be with the nurse bees on drawn comb for her
to rebuild the hive. In no time you can make another split or shook again.
Beekeeping is full of secrets and very flexible to manipulate the hive.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

McBee7 said:


> Here is a flavor of "Shook Swarm" I call ---Fat Bee Man Alamode----


Anybody know why he is smoking nurse bees?


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

I can think of a couple reasons. 

First, he is working without protection. Bees gorged on honey after smoking are much less likely to be defensive when you are shaking them out. "Some" of the bees in the group of nurse bees are a little older and quite capable of flying and stinging. 

Second, he was trying to get the nurse bees to move up into the box after he removed the entrance reducer. A few puffs of smoke stirred them up and got them marching in a little faster.


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## j.kuder (Dec 5, 2010)

Ace is a set them and forget them beekeeper and he don't want to do anything except take the honey off he don't do manipulations his signature says it all. Brian Cardinal Zone 5a, Practicing non-intervention beekeeping


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