# Reverse queen splits



## Alram

I do not have a good swarm management strategy. This year I split the queen out of the hive along with a few extra frames when I found swarm cells and could find the queen. I would leave one or two capped swarm cells in the main hive for them to requeen the hive. Should I have removed all the swarm cells and let them build back a queen from an egg if there were still eggs in the hive? Would removing all the swarm cells get the colony out of the swarm “mindset”? I am not aware that any of the hives swarmed after removing the queen and leaving a few swarm cells in place.


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## ifixoldhouses

I heard that raising a swarm cell queen, breeds swarming behavior, Paul Kelly UoG bee research center said it. Takes awhile to get an answer around here


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## snl

ifixoldhouses said:


> I heard that raising a swarm cell queen, breeds swarming behavior, Paul Kelly UoG bee research center said it.


In 45+ years of beekeeping, not my experience. I’ll take a plump swarm cell anytime.


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## Saltybee

snl said:


> In 45+ years of beekeeping, not my experience. I’ll take a plump swarm cell anytime.


46+ years I might listen to you, 45+ no way


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## MichiganMike

I would use the swarm cells they give you a minimum of tens days head start and that equals a lot of bees. Besides they usually make good queens.


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## Oldtimer

You did the right thing, trick with this maneuvre is to move most of the bees with the queen in that split so that she is able to continue laying strongly and be a productive colony, but won't swarm cos nearly all the field bees will return to the queenless colony.

The queenless colony will not swarm either if it has enough bees removed from it. However it is a good idea to kill most of the queen cells just to make sure of that.

The thing *not* to do, is move the queenless split and leave the laying queen on the original site. All the field bees will return to it, and if they were already preparing to swarm, they will still probably swarm.


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## Alram

Oldtimer said:


> You did the right thing, trick with this maneuvre is to move most of the bees with the queen in that split so that she is able to continue laying strongly and be a productive colony, but won't swarm cos nearly all the field bees will return to the queenless colony.
> 
> The queenless colony will not swarm either if it has enough bees removed from it. However it is a good idea to kill most of the queen cells just to make sure of that.
> 
> The thing *not* to do, is move the queenless split and leave the laying queen on the original site. All the field bees will return to it, and if they were already preparing to swarm, they will still probably swarm.


Wait! I removed the queen along with a few frames of mostly capped brood and put her in a nuc box. So I lost out on her productivity. But the original hive stayed pretty strong even though queenless. But I thought swarms were made up of young bees and I thought the older bees stayed with the original hive when the swarm leaves. So if I move her and a bunch of young bees, then won’t she swarm anyway? So, if you have double deeps for your original hive you would then split it in half? Do you kill the old queen at some point and recombine the hive?


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## Oldtimer

Alram said:


> Wait! I removed the queen along with a few frames of mostly capped brood and put her in a nuc box.


Yes, more bees with her would have been better. Moving her with a few bees, means she has laying potential, but can't use it due to lack of bees, whereas the other hive has plenty of adult bee resources but can't take advantage immediately due to no laying queen. Might as well put those resources where they will be useful.



Alram said:


> But I thought swarms were made up of young bees and I thought the older bees stayed with the original hive when the swarm leaves.


That's the common wisdom. Not sure if it's true. I have seen hives in the act of swarming, and seen field bees returning with a load of pollen on their legs, land on the entrance, then immediately join the swarm. So I know that at least some older bees go with the swarm.



Alram said:


> So if I move her and a bunch of young bees, then won’t she swarm anyway?


Not if you do it how i said. I do this routinely and it's close to 100% successful at preventing swarming. I don't get too fussed about how old the bees are.



Alram said:


> So, if you have double deeps for your original hive you would then split it in half?


Possibly. I just break the hives up depending on how they are made up and what the needs of each split will be in the coming weeks.



Alram said:


> Do you kill the old queen at some point and recombine the hive?


Me, no. However you could if you wish.


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## Alram

So how do you keep your Apiary from growing exponentially? I came thru the winter with 17 hives and now thru splits and swarm cells and swarms I have around 40 which is too much for me to manage.


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## Oldtimer

That's the problem, it's called hive creep. You keep getting more and more hives LOL.

But for me not an issue, I sell bees, that's my job.


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## little_john

Oldtimer said:


> "But I thought swarms were made up of young bees and I thought the older bees stayed with the original hive when the swarm leaves."
> That's the common wisdom. *Not sure if it's true.* I have seen hives in the act of swarming, and seen field bees returning with a load of pollen on their legs, land on the entrance, then immediately join the swarm. So I know that at least some older bees go with the swarm.


It's not true. Today is the 9th June - on the 1st I had a swarm arrive here from a neighbouring apiary. The guy pushes for an OSR (Canola) honey crop and sometimes overdoes things. As they're really nice bees (Buckfast) I hope he keeps on doing that ... 

Anyway - I've just made a first inspection and had expected to find a colony of modest size, perhaps in need of feeding, as we've just had a string of non-flying days due to continuous rain. 

But - not a bit of it. There's been a lot of comb tear-down and re-building due I suspect to a wax-moth nest, one comb is loaded-up with nectar, and another with pollen - and there's quite a lot of advanced larvae too.
I'd bet my pension nurse bees alone wouldn't have achieved all that in such a short time.
LJ


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## Alram

Oldtimer said:


> That's the problem, it's called hive creep. You keep getting more and more hives LOL.
> 
> But for me not an issue, I sell bees, that's my job.


Who do you sell your bees to and how much do you sell them for?


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## ifixoldhouses

snl said:


> In 45+ years of beekeeping, not my experience. I’ll take a plump swarm cell anytime.


I don't know just saying what the bee research center says, this is from their website:
11. Can you make a split without adding a mated queen/can a split raise their own queen?

A split can raise their own queen (if they have eggs), but it is better to purchase a mated queen or queen cell from a local bee breeder. Queens raised by a split are reared under the worst possible conditions, are physiologically inferior, and you aren't taking the opportunity to improve your hive genetics. For a number of reasons, colonies get more aggressive if splits raise their own queens. We always use queen cells that we have reared from breeder colonies so we can maintain and improve our genetics. Cells found in hives can be poorly reared if conditions aren't good or if you use swarm cells you, are unintentionally breeding for swarming behaviour.


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## Saltybee

To look at it from the other side; How many keepers have successfully bred a bee that will not swarm?
If you were to use a swarm cell from a hive that was light in bees and had plenty of space but still made swarm cells , you could, to an extent, keep a swarmy line going.


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## JWPalmer

IFOH, ya gotta understand that what you quoted is the researcher's OPINION. Unfortunantly for them, it is just not observed in real life beekeeping. Trying to breed swarming out of bees would be akin to trying to breed abstinence into a teenager. Ain't gonna happen, ever. Sure, some hives do have a tendancy to swarm more than others, as do some races of bees. It is well known that AHB swarm like crazy. A package that my mentee from last year bought kept swarming evey time they had a mated queen, at least four times, all about a month apart. I would not take one of those swarm cells if you paid me. Reality though is that strong hives make strong queens. A good queen is more about nutrition and mating than E cell, swarm cell, or supercedure, provided the bees have a sufficient variety of larvae to choose from. That is MY opinion.


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## Oldtimer

Alram said:


> Who do you sell your bees to and how much do you sell them for?


I'm in a different country to you Alram. The bees i sell do not have swarm made queens they have queens raised from selected breeders.

Hives i have that have a swarm raised queen get treated the same as all the other hives. If the bees have bad characteristics, such as swarminess, they are not bred from, and may be requeened.

However the law of unintended consequences can apply. Bees have used swarming as their only means of reproduction for thousands of years. Any healthy hive, given the right circumstances, will attempt to swarm. I heard of a bee breeding program that attempted to find and breed from bees with low swarminess. After some years, they realised they had ended up with a line of poor hives that didn't swarm, because they were too weak to swarm, at swarming time.


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## Apis Natural

Alram said:


> Who do you sell your bees to and how much do you sell them for?


Nucs in your area sell from 125 - 175 
I did a random search on TN craigslist...


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## Michael Bush

>Should I have removed all the swarm cells and let them build back a queen from an egg if there were still eggs in the hive? 

No.

>Would removing all the swarm cells get the colony out of the swarm “mindset”?

No.

>I am not aware that any of the hives swarmed after removing the queen and leaving a few swarm cells in place.

Sometimes bees do things that are not typical. They could swarm regardless of what you do, but odds are a split will change their mind.


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## little_john

ifixoldhouses said:


> *snl: * In 45+ years of beekeeping, not my experience. I’ll take a plump swarm cell anytime.
> 
> 
> 
> I don't know just saying what the *bee research center* says [...] We always use *queen cells that we have reared* from breeder colonies so we can maintain and improve our genetics. [...] if you use swarm cells you, are unintentionally breeding for swarming behaviour.
Click to expand...

The guy is trotting out the party-line - i.e. justifying the centre's activities/existence - you wouldn't expect such a person to look positively upon an example of natural behaviour, independent of human control, no more than you'd expect a turkey to vote for Christmas ! 
I agree - give me a well nourished swarm cell every time.  
It's what bees do - whenever they're allowed to.
LJ


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## little_john

*To grozzie2* 
If you disagree with what I've written above - then this forum is the right place to express your criticism, rather than sending me a hostile Personal Message, as each member of Beesource is entitled to hold and express their own opinion within each forum - subject to reasonable conduct, of course.

My opinion (fwiw) is that it is nothing less than self-delusional arrogance to consider that humans can 'improve' upon genetics which have been forged by natural processes over millions of years.
LJ


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## MichiganMike

The op asked in the opening post whether or not he should tear down capped queen cells or not some of us believe keeping them is the best choice. I think LJ agrees.


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## crofter

little_john said:


> *To grozzie2*
> If you disagree with what I've written above - then this forum is the right place to express your criticism, rather than sending me a hostile Personal Message, as each member of Beesource is entitled to hold and express their own opinion within each forum - subject to reasonable conduct, of course.
> 
> My opinion (fwiw) is that it is nothing less than self-delusional arrogance to consider that humans can 'improve' upon genetics which have been forged by natural processes over millions of years.
> LJ


A little bit of genetic tinkering or selective breeding can do wonders for the bottom line in many cases. If I was in the dairy business I wouldnt be encouraging any hereford bulls to hang around with my cows.


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## JWPalmer

One of the things that keeps the honey bee gene pool so fliud is the inability to control breeding. Short of II, one can not reasonably dictate which queen is going to mate with which drones. Even flooding the DCA with your desired drones is no guarantee the queen will mate with any of them. The best we can hope to do is select queens with the desired traits and pray that her offspring will exhibit them as well. All in all, it is a crap shoot at best.


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## crofter

I really don't know how long it would take if you were to set about deliberately to increase swarming tendency by using nothing but swarm cells. I guess it would depend on the drone pool in your area; how well your own drones were represented. Having a 15 to 1 dilution by the paternal line would seem to be a bit of a handicap. I suppose the same would apply if you were trying to avoid swarming.

Lots of things could be weighed into the calculation of benefit/ risk in swarm cells vs other options. Philosophy weighs heavy sometimes!

Since I went to using the Snelgrove board, swarming is pretty much a thing of the past. Since I have one on every full hive I could choose which one to rear from but since it is a non issue, I dont. Swarming in my location would make me very unpopular!


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## little_john

crofter said:


> A little bit of genetic tinkering or selective breeding can do wonders for the bottom line in many cases. If I was in the dairy business I wouldnt be encouraging any hereford bulls to hang around with my cows.


Hi Frank

Your's absolutely right - the bottom line (dollars and cents) is indeed the prime motivator for genetic 'tinkering'. But - such genetic selection can only be transitory at best, for the minute you stop such tinkering then the animal in question will revert to type - just as evolution has forged them over millions of years. So - you're then compelled to tinker and keep on tinkering, just as if you were pushing water uphill - and the less 'domesticated' the animal, the quicker such reversion will occur, should you ever stop.

But for those engaged in this activity of pushing water uphill, their salaries depend upon customers buying into this _modus operandi,_ and so it would appear that their opinions sometimes stray into (understandable) salesmanship rather than being grounded firmly in science.

Re: the swarming of honeybees - this could be divided into two distinctly different forms, with one being undoubtedly genetic, as can be seen in the Carniolan bee which requires a very different and appropriate management strategy if excessive swarming is to be avoided when using standard equipment.

The other form of swarming could be said to occur in other strains of bee when conditions within the beehive trigger this. I think it would be fair to describe such bees as being 'non-predisposed to swarming, but will do so in response to various conditions'.

Now - it appears to be suggested that if such a colony does produce swarm cells, then raising queens from those swarm cells is "unintentionally breeding for swarming behaviour".
Such an opinion strays very close indeed to Lamarckism, being the hypothesis that an organism is able to pass on to its offspring behavioural characteristics developed during it's own lifetime, and as such runs counter to Darwinian theory (which of course is genetics-based).
Lamarckism spawned the philosophy of Lysenkoism, which was applied to agriculture during the Stalin era with disastrous consequences, and as a result has become totally discredited.

Thus to be apparently promoting such a neo-Lamarckian view - I would describe that as being 'quasi-scientific salesmanship' and without any hard evidence to support it.
LJ


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## crofter

I think it is quite possible that making choices favoring swarminess is merely selecting for Carniolan type genetics. If there is a mixture of italian and carni in the surrounding bees, then I think that breeding from swarm cells could indeed lead to your bees becoming relatively more swarmy If you purchase queens from the large producers, those bees _generally_ lean toward the more italian traits which serve well for pollination and mass producing bees.

For my climate and management I strongly prefer carni traits. If the bees you need are more italian in habits then perhaps you could take some measures to keep carni traits from taking over. Then shunning swarm queens might be at least tokenly effective. 

I see two sides to the issue and neither is right or wrong: Such situations, as usual, are ripe for ideological justification.


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## Oldtimer

Very good points.

Here's my take. Bees have always come from swarms, so in theory, continuing to take bees from swarms shouldn't change much.

BUT, there is the human factor. Before humans started messing with bees, bees had to swarm the correct amount. IE, they couldn't just send out swarms by the dozen because they would be too small to have a good chance of survival. There would be some optimal number of swarms for a hive to send out that could be a big enough size to get the maximum overall survival rate of swarm numbers from a particular parent hive, plus ensure the survival of the parent hive. That number may have varied by location, which could be why some breeds like carniolans are more swarmy than others.

But now with human management, if we keep all swarms plus the queens that came with them, we will ensure that even the weak survive. Thus, if we have some bees that send out 5 swarms and other bees that only send one, and we keep them all plus ensure their survival, we will gradually be getting a higher percentage of swarmy type bees in our apiaries. There may not be mutations towards swarminess, more likely, as Crofter said, we will be getting more of existing swarmy genetics, like carniolans.

So for me, although I am happy to use queens produced in swarming, they will never be my breeders. So I'm not actively eliminating those bees (which is probably futile), but I'm adding overwhelming numbers of selected bees to my stock, to keep the less desireable in check.

Something i've learned though, i don't think it pays to totally eliminate a line of bees that for some reason we see as not desireable. Just about all of them, given some particular circumstance, surprise us with some good trait that was locked away in their genetics. Only exception is aggression, which I just can't be bothered with and i try to totally eliminate those ones, which where I am, is mostly caused by the little remaining AMM genetics in our bee population.


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## Michael Bush

>I heard that raising a swarm cell queen, breeds swarming behavior

There is such a thing as swarmy bees, but just because they want to swarm doesn't mean they are swarmy. Bees that swarm without a good reason or that swarm themselves to death are what I call "swarmy".

"For years our bee journals have been printing reams of articles on the question of a non-swarming strain of bees. It has always seemed to me there was a lot of time wasted advocating such an improbable accomplishment, because nature would hardly yield to an arrangement that in itself might destroy the species. If accomplished it would be tantamount to breeding the mating instinct out of domestic animals." --P.C. Chadwick ABJ, April 1936


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## johno

There is much good in swarms, Doolittle noted that swarms really go to work with a will to build comb store honey and raise brood. He also talks of swarm fever when some colonies swarm they seem to excite other colonies close by and tend to get them into swarm mode as well. The quandary of course is that swarming loses your workforce and stored honey so your harvest is effected. Other problems that arise is that the swarm season in my area coincides with my short and only nectar flow, It appears to me that when a colony is getting into swarm mode foragers do not seem to get out and forage. So here at the end of April I have about 6 acres of blooming crimson clover with not a lot of bees working it. This is potentially 1200lbs of honey of which I think I am lucky if I get 400lbs. So what to do about it? I am seriously considering shook swarming all my hives in Mid April next year and see if I do any better.


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## Oldtimer

Johno i tried something last spring that was a bit different, but worked quite well. Hives with swarm cells and a queen i didn't really want, I found and killed the queen, plus killed all but one of the queen cells. Effectively stopped swarming at least for a few weeks, and some of those hives went on and gave an excellent honey crop.

Where it went wrong somewhat is that some queen cells had black queencell virus, and if the cell i left was infected, the bees would have to raise an emergency queen from an egg. However in the main, it worked quite well.


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## Alram

crofter said:


> I really don't know how long it would take if you were to set about deliberately to increase swarming tendency by using nothing but swarm cells. I guess it would depend on the drone pool in your area; how well your own drones were represented. Having a 15 to 1 dilution by the paternal line would seem to be a bit of a handicap. I suppose the same would apply if you were trying to avoid swarming.
> 
> Lots of things could be weighed into the calculation of benefit/ risk in swarm cells vs other options. Philosophy weighs heavy sometimes!
> 
> Since I went to using the Snelgrove board, swarming is pretty much a thing of the past. Since I have one on every full hive I could choose which one to rear from but since it is a non issue, I dont. Swarming in my location would make me very unpopular!


Can you explain your technique for using a double screen board to prevent swarming?


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## little_john

Oldtimer said:


> So for me, *although I am happy to use queens produced in swarming, they will never be my breeders.* So I'm not actively eliminating those bees (which is probably futile), but I'm adding overwhelming numbers of selected bees to my stock, to keep the less desireable in check.


Are you sure about this ? If you raise colonies headed by queens originating from swarm cells, then the drones from those colonies - which will be carrying that particular queen's genetics of course - will be mating with virgins from your 'breeder' queens, in competition with more 'desirable' drones. Hence they will be playing an equal part in whatever results - that is, assuming you don't employ AI techniques.
I think your choice of word 'futile' is entirely appropriate to an open mating scenario.

FWIW - this is what the 'official' literature says about the Carniolan bee:


> *2. How to Manage the Carniolan Alpine Bee. *
> The Carniolan bee is known as a swarming bee. This would imply that she is not desirable in localities where only one early honey flow is the rule. The Carniolan bee is only a bee inclined to excessive swarming as long she is kept in small hives. As soon she is transfered to hives that can be enlarged, giving the queen room to satisfy her breeding capacity, she loses her inclination for swarming without losing her prolificness.
> [...]
> Of the Carniolan bee it is said that she is a swarming bee, that does not achieve any great results in respect of honey gathering. In my opinion this later statement is always based on a wrong handling of the Carniolan bee, not taking in consideration the characteristics of this race, and the local pecularities of the honey flow.
> The Carniolan Alpine bee is decidedly, even for localities without a late honeyflow, a great success — if managed properly.
> [...]
> Regarding the great swarming tendencies of the Carniolan bee, it must be said that this is not at all a disadvantage. Quite the contrary. Her early maturity is of great value. A strong Carniolan colony can at the end of May have two swarms without diminishing the quantity of honey of the mother colony.
> 
> *from "The Carniolan Gray-Banded Bee", published by the Imperial Royal Agricultural Association of Carniola, 1911.*


'best
LJ


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## crofter

Alram said:


> Can you explain your technique for using a double screen board to prevent swarming?


https://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?320339-Snelgrove-boards-anybody-using-them

Here is a thread that will give you some info. One of the posts gives a link to a downloadable file of Snelgroves booklet, Swarming, its control and prevention.

I have been using them for more than 5 years. It is not a gimmick! Takes care of swarming and all my queen rearing.


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## Oldtimer

little_john said:


> If you raise colonies headed by queens originating from swarm cells, then the drones from those colonies - which will be carrying that particular queen's genetics of course - will be mating with virgins from your 'breeder' queens, in competition with more 'desirable' drones.


And the drones from those virgins once they are laying, will not be carrying those genetics.

Gotta think about that one. 

Just got to keep feeding in a reasonable number of desireable virgins, bearing in mind it is not my plan to completely eliminate any genetic line.


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## Oldtimer

Just to explain that a bit more, consider this hypothetical example of a beekeeper who likes golden italian bees, but purchases an isolated apiary of pure black carniolans. 

So he kills all the queens and gives each hive an italian virgin. The virgins mate with the only drones available, black ones. The hives then become populated with mixed color bees, but all the drones are golden. One year later he goes through the hives and kills all the queens again, and gives each hive another italian virgin. This time the hives become populated with the golden italian bees he was aiming for.

In real life it is not often quite that simple, there will usually be a few other things that happen in between times to mess up the plan with a few of the hives. But that is the beauty of bee genetics, it is harder for us to mess them up like we have with say, pedigree dogs.


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## grozzie2

little_john said:


> *To grozzie2*
> If you disagree with what I've written above - then this forum is the right place to express your criticism, rather than sending me a hostile Personal Message, as each member of Beesource is entitled to hold and express their own opinion within each forum - subject to reasonable conduct, of course.


Actually, this forum is not the right place. I usually try keep at thread on track by adding from our own experience, rather than going off on personal tangents that have nothing to do with the topic at hand. But since you insist...

The quote below is way off base, slagging a highly respected beekeeper that's been managing the apiary in a highly respected university setting for many years is way out of line, and this kind of never ending and incessant slagging we see on this site from folks pushing their own personal agenda is the reason many highly respected and successful commercial beekeepers no longer seem to participate here.



little_john said:


> The guy is trotting out the party-line - i.e. justifying the centre's activities/existence - you wouldn't expect such a person to look positively upon an example of natural behaviour, independent of human control, no more than you'd expect a turkey to vote for Christmas !


Beesource used to be a valuable source of beekeeping information, but stuff like that quoted above has changed it. It's become a place where fringe concepts are promoted to the detriment of sound beekeeping practices, and that kind of slagging devalues the forum where those of us that are actually interested in productive beekeeping are slowly all leaving. Most of the participants that are commercial beekeepers from whom I took a lot of good information over the years have slowly left and I find most conversations these days revolve around various agendas that dont align with folks trying to run a productive apiary, but tend to some altruistic and often unrealistic set of ideals that run counter to productive beekeeping.

Thru my association with our provincial association I have met Mr Kelley and had the opportunity to discuss various beekeeping issues with him in person. He is very knowledgeable and brings a wealth of experience to the conversation gathered from decades of working with bees and managing the Buckfast breeding efforts at the UofG from which many beekeepers derive stock. When you start equating his experience to 'A turkey voting for Christmas' you demonstae a level of ignorance that has no place on this site and cause those of us who can hold a civil conversation on subjects to re-evaluate why we even bother to participate here.

You sir are WAY out of line, and I chose to tell you that without confrontation in front of the group. But you choose to make it a big deal in public, so be it. You get your wish.

Back in the good old days when Barry still ran this site and conversation was about serious efforts at productive beekeeping, commentary like quoted above would result in a 'time-out' for the poster, in some cases permanently. It's really to bad that doesn't apply anymore.


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## JWPalmer

Johno, you might want to consider April 1st as your artificial swarm date. My bees are almost exclusively carni/caucasian mutts. All the strong hives had swarmed or were in swarm prep by mid April. My plan next year to avoid this is to have all the splits made by end of March and to graft a bar or two of cells to cover the misses.


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## Saltybee

"the forum where those of us that are actually interested in productive beekeeping are slowly all leaving. "

I would have no problem where "commercial" requires a 50 hive minimum to post. Don't mind listening to a good conversation, probably better if I was forced to keep my mouth shut.


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## johno

Now for those who want to take the words of some experts as gospel, there are others who will question this so called knowledge that is cast in stone, unfortunately I have always been one of those. However take a young man that has questioned this knowledge cast in stone for years and years only to find it was all a load of horse manure. The name Ramsey comes to mind.


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## johno

JW I also have carni mutts and have kept most in their hives but feel that when they all gather around for their swarm decision meetings not much work seems to get done. While I am working on preventing them from leaving the hive a short while later they think about it again and again until the flow is over. When I have removed the surplus honey I could not care if they wanted to swarm as my next problem is to make sure that they have enough stores for winter so as the queens continue with bee increases they just gobble up all the stores. So my next plan is to leave the queen excluder on but over one box only to reduce the space for brood rearing so I do not have to keep very large colonies over winter. I also did 30 grafts on the 11th of April so I could have removed 29 queens and given each hive a grafted cell, Maybe next year I will do that with 15 hives and try to shook swarm another 15 and see what the yields look like.


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## crofter

johno said:


> Now for those who want to take the words of some experts as gospel, there are others who will question this so called knowledge that is cast in stone, unfortunately I have always been one of those. However take a young man that has questioned this knowledge cast in stone for years and years only to find it was all a load of horse manure. The name Ramsey comes to mind.


The word of many experts *can* be taken at face value, others not so much. If you default to disbelieving everything associated with "the establishment" you can easily handicap yourself. Stereotyping can be blinding.


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## drummerboy

crofter said:


> The word of many experts *can* be taken at face value, others not so much. If you default to disbelieving everything associated with "the establishment" you can easily handicap yourself. Stereotyping can be blinding.



:thumbsup:


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## Gray Goose

little_john said:


> The guy is trotting out the party-line - i.e. justifying the centre's activities/existence - you wouldn't expect such a person to look positively upon an example of natural behaviour, independent of human control, no more than you'd expect a turkey to vote for Christmas !
> I agree - give me a well nourished swarm cell every time.
> It's what bees do - whenever they're allowed to.
> LJ


+1 I will take a well developed swarm cell as well. not sure where this Bee center person got his funding from, but queen breeders is a good bet


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## johno

It is not really about believing or not believing conventional wisdom but more of questioning some of this stuff that has come down over the years. It is by questioning and testing these beliefs that we learn and come to conclusions. As for this swarming subject, I have purchased breeder queens for traits like mite resistance and non swarming traits and yet they die from PMS if mites are not kept in check and they eventually try to swarm when the conditions for them are right. The only queens I have that have not swarmed are the ones with clipped wings, and they did not swarm cause they could not fly. Sometimes the rest of the hive swarmed and settled only to find that they did not have a queen with them and after a while all returned to the hive.


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## Gray Goose

johno said:


> It is not really about believing or not believing conventional wisdom but more of questioning some of this stuff that has come down over the years. It is by questioning and testing these beliefs that we learn and come to conclusions. As for this swarming subject, I have purchased breeder queens for traits like mite resistance and non swarming traits and yet they die from PMS if mites are not kept in check and they eventually try to swarm when the conditions for them are right. The only queens I have that have not swarmed are the ones with clipped wings, and they did not swarm cause they could not fly. Sometimes the rest of the hive swarmed and settled only to find that they did not have a queen with them and after a while all returned to the hive.


If one looks back for 1000 years, which is one of the "tactics" I use to better understand. Swarming is how bees reproduce, so with out "swarming" traits bees would eventually dwindle to nothing. Ok so I can understand the some sub species maybe do swarm more often, this could be because there were less likely to succeed or had more predators or some other pre disposition. also a swarm made queen is the bees attempt to make a new queen to replace the one they have as the 1 they have is leaving with the swarm. they have successfully done this for a very long time... I realize **** Sapiens have got fairly good at making queens however I think the bees are fine at it as well. To say a swarm queen is likely to produce swarmy queens is not really understanding, how bees operate. the reason 10 beekeepers have 13 answers for any given question , Is IMO due to lack of humans understanding what, how, when, where of bees. If 100% understanding were to be present, then we would all agree. So some of this several answers thing is Ignorance. "Where" A major item is locality, bees in Canada will behave very different from bees in Florida. And you have gradients all the way in between. Some areas experience Derth some do not, some have winters to tend with some do not. I have hived several swarms, in almost every case these hives do better than the packages I hived at the same site. As well these queens were as good as any I have purchased. So any new Beekeepers can do fine with swarms, they are a cost effective way to start/play with bees. Some folks have only caught swarms and split them for their bees , IE they never purchased bees. so in some areas catching swarms is a viable way to do beekeeping. with that said in Alaska, one may look a long time for a swarm. So the words never and always, often do not pertain to beekeeping. Also keep in mind the lens we have is for our locale, it often will not be the same as everyone else lens.
Happy learning.
GG


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## little_john

I don't know if it would help or hinder - but it could be useful to look at honeybee behaviour in two distinctly separate ways: hard and soft.

What I would call 'hard' behaviours are examples like the collecting of pollen and nectar, and of building comb - and the myriad behaviours which are associated with them. These are not random behaviours, but very purposeful indeed, and are - for all intents and purposes - 'hard-wired' into the honeybee's DNA. There's nowhere else for these instructions to be held and passed on from one generation to the next, as we know that bees do not learn these skills from one another. Swarming is but another example of such 'hard-wired' behaviour.

But we *can* select to avoid certain behaviours such as over-defensiveness and following, and perhaps select to optimise grooming and other hygienic traits - these are short-term behaviour changes which I would call 'soft', meaning that such changes are only temporary, and require constant human reinforcement if they are to persist. Failure to do this will cause the bee to revert to it's wild-type 'hard-wired' behaviour - whatever that happens to be for that particular sub-type. 
I would say that it may well be possible to breed a bee in which swarming only takes place as a last resort - but that such breeding would of necessity be 'soft': such that if the breeding program for this was not maintained, then the bee would revert to it's default 'hard-wired' natural swarming behaviour.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the difference between hard and soft is that of time: natural behaviours have taken millions of years to have become 'hard-wired' into the honeybee's DNA, and it would therefore presumably take many thousands of years to modify any of them in a significant or lasting way. Changes that we may be able to create within a few generations must therefore always be considered 'soft' and thus transitory - unless we are prepared to invest monumental efforts in the pushing of water uphill - and then trying to keep it there ...
LJ


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## grozzie2

johno said:


> It is not really about believing or not believing conventional wisdom but more of questioning some of this stuff that has come down over the years.


It's quite possible to do so in a civil manner thru construction conversation. As you so well demonstrate in this thread, name calling and hand waving has taken precedence over constructive conversation for the most part these days. It's unproductive and devalues the conversation to the point there is little value left.


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## Alram

Thank you for the link to the discussion about Snelgrove boards. Is this the technique where you split the queen out and place her on top of the hive over a double screen board, letting the bottom hive raise a new Queen, and then putting the honey suppers below the double screen, and then toggling the pegs every 2 weeks so as to trick the bees into moving into the bottom box? Do you have to keep the old queen split off the original hive for 16 days until a new Queen has been raised? Will the bottom hive will raise a new queen if the old queen is placed above the hive right away. I remember being told that in this technique you split the old queen off with only capped brood? What is the reason for that? It appears that the book link that you mentioned is no longer active but I did see that the book can be purchased on Amazon.


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## Gray Goose

Alram said:


> So how do you keep your Apiary from growing exponentially? I came thru the winter with 17 hives and now thru splits and swarm cells and swarms I have around 40 which is too much for me to manage.


Pick your 5 worst Queens and plot thier demise. add the brood and bees to weaker hives with good queens , not you have 35.
Sell some, either full hive or NUC.


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## crofter

Alram said:


> Thank you for the link to the discussion about Snelgrove boards. It appears that the book link that you mentioned is no longer active but I did see that the book can be purchased on Amazon.


Alram; you have asked questions that are well explained in Snelgroves booklet. It is out of print but available used if you must have the copy in your hands. It is available in PDF. format 

http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/bits...AU 33372.pdf

It not only tells you the moves to make but explains the reasoning behind it. Trying to memorize the moves without understanding why will make your head ache! If you take three or four hours to get the idea firmly in your head the door manipulations become easy.


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