# How to control swarming in a large-scale operation



## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

I control swarming with population control. I manage my hives by box manipulation and control the movement of the queen.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Can you give me a summary form the main steps to control swarming in your hives ?
I can give you, if you are interested , more details about the technique I use . Thank you Ian.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> Can you give me a summary form the main steps to control swarming in your hives ?


Well, because you asked, of course !! Here is a cut and paste from another topic I posted to;



I group my large "split hives" into yards. They all get second brood chambers put on in April. Later in May we cut the hives in half (this is what we are doing in this pic) to make our split and come around in three days to queen anything with emergency cells. At this time we super up the entire operation with seconds to allow further expansion of the colony. Then on the onset of the flow, we shake er down into the bottom brood, insert our excluders and super for the flow.
The boom loader works great for this job. One guy setting the yard, one guy splitting the boxes, one guy loading the truck and taking the pictures...


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Ian,

Thanks for posting this.

1) How much effort do you give to equalize the brood when doing the splits?
2) When you "shake er down" do you rearrange brood at this time? If so, what exactly do you try to achieve?

Thanks.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

AstroBee said:


> 1) How much effort do you give to equalize the brood when doing the splits?


The trick to achieving this job is moving hives into yards of equal strength. It's how I manage my spring workload by being able to bring in grunt school kid labour to help. I try to keep all the yard work the same so its merely a process of moving equipment to achieve my hive manipulation goals. When we split the hives apart, we do just that, nothing else. Three days later on our queen inspection (looking for emergency cells and or eggs) we count frames of brood. We take from the stronger and give to the weaker. It evens things out to the point where the entire yard is exactly the same. The only difference is the one half has a queen still going, so there is a weeks delay in the split without queen. The new queen in the split makes up for that lost time. 



AstroBee said:


> 2) When you "shake er down" do you rearrange brood at this time? If so, what exactly do you try to achieve?


When the flow starts, we shake the queen down to the bottom. SOme smoke er down, some use fumes. I usually have a large staff so we spend the time shaking which gets 99.9% of the queens and do not have to deal with the trouble of bees running out of the frounts. We have virtually no queen losses this way. We do not re arrange brood at all during this time as the boomers are encouraged as we enter the flow. I guess we could further equalize but at this time of the year we are scrambling to get the queen down before the box gets plugged with honey. HOney really slows down the process and the hives usually are screaming for space above.

After all these years of beekeeping I have finally perfected this job. I can split my entire operation within two weeks and not have to F around the weather forecast. It helps manage spring queen deliveries much more efficiently. It allows me to bring in help and makes this time of year less stressful.


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## mbc (Mar 22, 2014)

Thanks for the insight Ian, so is the equalizing done soon after the bees are out of the shed?

And how long then to the split?


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

mbc said:


> Thanks for the insight Ian, so is the equalizing done soon after the bees are out of the shed?


no equalizing is done til the split. shal I say, I dont equalize til we work through with the queen work
Any hive that does not make the grade for splitting is also separated into yards and worked through accordingly. Many get new queens, some will yield a nuc, others need a bit of a boost.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Ian said:


> Well, because you asked, of course !!


Thank you Ian!


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

I have a friend who one year split his hives this way. Be aware that this was in a good location where quality pollen was available and a nectar flow was on. 

What he did was to take his two story hives and equalize brood in both boxes, so there were as many frames of brood and of honey and pollen in each box as best as he could. That's what he did one day in a yard of 80 hives all in 4way pallets. 

Then the next day he returned and using a fume board he forced all of the bees down out of the upper box. He removed the upper box and installed a queen excluder and returned the upper box to it's original position. Then he left for the day.

On the third day he returned to the yard w/ as many empty pallets as there were already in the yard and as many covers. His intention is to split the whole yard, doubling the hive count. He also came w/ as many queens as there were hives.

He placed a caged queen on each quarter of an empty pallet, took the top box and lid from a pallet of hives in the yard, removed the excluder and installed a lid on those hives. Then he picked up the pallet of parent hives and placed it on his truck and placed the pallet of splits w/new queens on the spot where the original pallet of hives had set.

Once the whole yard was finished he loaded his skid steer loader and took the truck load of hives to another location. Yes, in the middle of the day.

The bees went down on those caged queens and released them. Most of them took. As many as usually take.


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## WBVC (Apr 25, 2013)

By shaking do youmean you shake bees off frames one frame at a time before putting a Queen excluder or do you lift and the entire upper box?
I am new so please excuse me if this procedure is apparent to all save myself.
Also,do purchase in all your replacement Queens? I presume they are mated Queens.
Do you leave excluders on above a single brood box all season?



Ian said:


> The trick to achieving this job is moving hives into yards of equal strength. It's how I manage my spring workload by being able to bring in grunt school kid labour to help. I try to keep all the yard work the same so its merely a process of moving equipment to achieve my hive manipulation goals. When we split the hives apart, we do just that, nothing else. Three days later on our queen inspection (looking for emergency cells and or eggs) we count frames of brood. We take from the stronger and give to the weaker. It evens things out to the point where the entire yard is exactly the same. The only difference is the one half has a queen still going, so there is a weeks delay in the split without queen. The new queen in the split makes up for that lost time.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

WBVC said:


> By shaking do youmean you shake bees off frames one frame at a time before putting a Queen excluder or do you lift and the entire upper box?
> I am new so please excuse me if this procedure is apparent to all save myself.
> Also,do purchase in all your replacement Queens? I presume they are mated Queens.
> Do you leave excluders on above a single brood box all season?


I choose the method of handling each frame to shake ensuring the queen is put down. I usually have lots of help about this time as my school recruits start arriving to work. 
I buy all my queens mated. I produce my own queens for later Nuc production. 
Once the excluder goes in the focus shifts to honey production til September. The nest is managed as a single.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

ian, at the time of the shaking down to the bottom box, is that bottom box empty or mostly empty?


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

squarepeg said:


> ian, at the time of the shaking down to the bottom box, is that bottom box empty or mostly empty?


The bottom box will have 8 plus frames of brood and bees when I add the super for the queen to move up. She moves up and continues the nest expansion and usually has reign over both boxes for three weeks. Typically during spring expansion she fills the bottom, then moves up, fills the upper box, then would naturally move back down to the empty cells. 
So yes, as my theory dictates, she should be moved back down into empty space.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

After I place the bees out of the winter shed, a couple of weeks into brooding I will add a second brood chamber onto the *STRONG* hives. This is my set up for the split. In this case, the queen has two boxes to work at the same time, and will hold her cluster between the two boxes equally ( in most cases). This is what allows me to make efficient splits with this method.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

understood ian, many thanks.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

ian, is there enough natural forage available when you bring them out of the shed or is it necessary to supplement to get the populations up prior to your main honey flow?


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

squarepeg said:


> ian, is there enough natural forage available when you bring them out of the shed or is it necessary to supplement to get the populations up prior to your main honey flow?


Right off the start we feed patties, dry protein and syrup. Soon as the trees bloom they ignore anything I give them till this rich bloom ends. Runs for a good month. Colony build up always follows this bloom, and the split is planned near the end of it. Then its back onthe feed after the split until the flows


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

got it ian, thanks again.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

How do you split squarepeg?


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

so far i have split a couple of different ways. one is what is described as a 'cut down split', whereby the queen and a few frames of bees are split out into a nuc just prior to our swarm season/main flow and the parent colony is allowed to requeen itself. i've had pretty good luck with this as the parent colonies didn't swarm and i still got a decent crop from them. even some of those nucs with such an early start managed to produce a little harvestable honey.

the other method has been to divide up my weaker/less productive hives into several nucs each and requeen them with grafted queens from my best colonies. these come along later in the season and are used for nuc sales and to replace any empty slots in my yards.

i am going to try your shake down method on some of mine this coming spring. i overwinter in a single deep with one or two mediums on top. the bees overwinter in the deep. in feburary i checkerboard the mediums with alternating frames of honey and empty comb. the broodnests expand nicely up into those mediums. some colonies will continue to move up into additional supers of empty comb and not swarm. other colonies ignore the additional supers, establish solid honey in the first or second super and then proceed to backfill the deep and swarm.

i want to try moving the queen back down to the deep and below an excluder on a few to see how that works out. since i have only a small number of hives i will likely just locate the queens and moved them down without shaking. 

last year my overwintered five frame nucs ended up growing into double deeps by april, and they had their broodnests largely in the upper deeps with no honey reserve overhead. these were slated for splitting and that's what i did with them, but i have wondered since what would have happened if i would have moved the queens down below an excluder and supered.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

squarepeg said:


> other colonies ignore the additional supers, establish solid honey in the first or second super and then proceed to backfill the deep and swarm.[…] and they had their broodnests largely in the upper deeps with no honey reserve overhead


I also have colonies that behave this way.
I think it is a genetic issue. They are referenced in my notes. In the splits of these hives I introduce eggs of other I like best.


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