# snelgrove board qs again



## psm1212

aran: I think that crofter (Frank) and enjambres (Nancy) are the BS resident experts on snelgrove boards, so hopefully they will chime in. L. E. Snelgrove wrote about splitting with queen cells already formed in Method II of his book. However, you will poke your eyes out and burn your Snelgrove book trying to follow him. A MUCH better summation (and adaptation) of Snelgrove's Method II is Wally Shaw's paper that I am linking below. I seem to remember Nancy saying that she has had great success with Method II (sorry if I am misquoting you Nancy). In any event, I have not tried Method II, but am very interested in your experience if you attempt it. Good luck and let us know how it goes.

http://www.wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/The-Many-Uses-Of-A-Snelgrove-Board-by-Wally-Shaw.pdf


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## aran

ill take a read thanks mate.


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## Vance G

My answer is it depends on how many splits you want or do you want to maximize your honey crop. If you want increase and you have cells, divide your bees among them and catch your queen and put her with three frames of brood to build a new colony for next year. 

If you want honey production, move all your wet brood and the best two cells on the same side of the same frame above the board and kill the rest. Have your queen and the capped brood and added empty combs below the board. If this is a monster hive, I would put an excluder over the bottom box and put on a super underneath the board. 

When your queen starts laying in the top box, move the excluder to the top and add your super/s on top. take out the division and let the new queen supercede the old one in the bottom.


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## aran

i have a few overwintered nucs to put into 10 F equipment and will probably make most of my splits off them.
The 3 larger hives i was going to try and have produce honey so will use the SBs on them like i did last year. They are def large hives and last year it was a real challenge to find the queens.
May have to try a shaker box perhaps.


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## enjambres

Answer depends on whether you find those charged cells during swarm season.

If yes, then the procedure for using a snelgrove board is COMPLETELY different than when you;re just making increase.

google: the many uses of a snelgrove board, welsh beekeeper's assoc. You want the technique described last ion the document

Bad computer issues today. will answer mpore another day.

N


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## Fivej

This is not the Welch Beekeepers, but it is from the UK http://barnsleybeekeepers.org.uk/snelgrove.html


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## aran

just read the whole wbka article-> phew ...had to re-read and re-read to get the ideas in my head.
-> still not 100% sure that i have the whole what to do with queen cells thing.

Guess ill just keep doing weekly inspections starting early April and try and just follow the pre-emptive artificial swarm idea with the SB.
If i find capped qcs then i suppose ill put that frame into a queen castle perhaps and go from there.


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## crofter

aran said:


> Quick question. I have used SB in the past with good success in terms of getting a new mated queen in the top box.
> Im curious what to do if you find queen cells before you separate the colony. In other words lets say i go out to do my spring inspection and find capped/uncapped but with larvae queen cells in the bottom box...ie they are getting ready to swarm.
> Do i remove the frames with the queen cells and put em in the queen castle to start off a new nuc? or do i put them above the SB in the top box with the brood frames?
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> Aran


I only did that method of moving the queen and all the brood and capped cells above the board. It was an unplanned near dark happening and only once so dont read too much into my experience. Anyways, the cells got torn down and the queen went back to laying and the bottom box raised a new queen and did not swarm. This swarm preps were after a long rainy period and carniolan bees, so not the usual swarm preps scenario. I usually split them with the division board before I have cells started so this caught me by surprise.

I cant remember at the moment Snelgroves reasoning of why it works. Enjambres will be back with more explanation as she has often used that method to quench swarming when preparations are well advanced when discovered.


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## crofter

aran said:


> i have a few overwintered nucs to put into 10 F equipment and will probably make most of my splits off them.
> The 3 larger hives i was going to try and have produce honey so will use the SBs on them like i did last year. They are def large hives and last year it was a real challenge to find the queens.
> May have to try a shaker box perhaps.


I dont even try to find the queens anymore when I am setting up the division boards. I just shake off most of the bees into what will be the lower box and the queen is the first to dislodge. The nurse bees hang on for dear life because they have not tested their wings yet! You only have to shake off the frames that will be going into the box above the queen excluder. I only use the shaker box when I actually want the queen in hand like when wanting to be 100% sure it is the new young queen taking over rather than just pulling the division board and assuming that the younger queen will be the winner.

Whether you shake or not will depend on whether you want queens from already capped cells or are mainly interested in heading off a swarm. Whether or not you raise new queens from the exercise is optional.


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## enjambres

OK, Computer squared away, now. (whew!)

This is the reference material I use most often: http://www.wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/The-Many-Uses-Of-A-Snelgrove-Board-by-Wally-Shaw.pdf It goes far beyond the Barnsley Beekeepers document

Anyway, I want to answer the OP's question about what to do when you find charged queen cells on inspection and want to forestall a swarm.

First of all, you have to know whether they already have swarmed. If not, then you're in time, but maybe just barely so time may of the essence. Don't put this off until a more-convenient time.

In a "regular" Snelgrove usage, it's a one step-process in which you leave the queen downstairs and (in a general way) put the doings for the bees to make themselves a new queen upstairs and then leave them alone to get on with it. Which in my experience they usually do quite well. It's not terribly critical as far as which,, and how many frames go where sense, beyond the basics of "queen down" and "frame(s) with eggs or or very young larvae up", along with sufficient bees and food and pollen resources in each part to carry on. And if you screw up the divvying up of the age-classes of the bees, the little doors allow to you easily move foraging and oriented bees between the sections to get it all sorted out.

But when you are faced with a colony that has already decided to swarm (or else they wouldn't have charged queen cells in place), the Snelgrove board is used for different purpose. And that is to significantly interfere with their plans. 

The hive won't swarm unless they have things in the hive arranged so that the colony left behind has a good chance of surviving (swarming is a form of whole-colony reproduction, albeit a non-sexual one.) And a prime swarm, by definition, means the existing queen leaves taking with her a good whack of the colony's younger bees.

So the imminent-swarm usage of a Snelgrove board has to separate the queen from the resources she needs to carry out the swarm. It's an attempt to severely alter the distribution (between the two sections) of young and old bees, and thoroughly interrupt the sequence of maturing brood.

You need to read the instructions in the document linked above, Part III is what you want if you already have queen cells.

But in brief, the bottom box is stocked with empty drawn combs (with some stores as a back up), not with foundation, and two specially-chosen frames (with their attendant nurse bees) that have the proper-aged resources to make a new queen, i.e. eggs and very young larvae. And this is most important thing: Make sure the queen is not on either of these two frames. No need to find her among all the bees the whole hive, just make sure she is not on these two frame. I just look these two frames over very, very carefully, particularly if I have not seen - and temporarily isolated the queen in a nuc box.

(As a practical matter, if the weather is quite warm and well-settled, you could shake all the bees gently off of these two frames and install them above a queen excluder. Leave them for an hour or so and they will become covered with nurse bees, and not the queen. I almost never do this however, because of the risk the colony might truly be on the verge of swarming and that even an hour might make the difference between keeping them at home, or losing them. I do swarm checks with Snelgrove board stacked on my work cart, and if I find that I have failed to head off a swarm and they've made queen cells, I immediately deploy the SB.) 

Anyway, the bottom part has the two queenless, but well-supplied with eggs and young larvae frames; lots of empty drawn combs, and all the oriented bees which will be returning through their familiar entrance points. This part should also be well supplied with supers as the bees will have little else to do, and there is often a good flow on during swarm periods.

Meanwhile, upstairs there are all the other brood frames, both capped and open, all thoroughly examined and relieved of any queen cells you can find; herself, the queen (though you needn't try to go to the trouble of finding her at this point); several empty drawn brood frames; and a liberal supply of nectar, honey and pollen frames since it will shortly become forager-free as those bees will go downstairs. Depending on the weather, and the number of brood frames I sometimes even have a two deep boxes, at the outset.

What's going on here is this: the bottom section, finding themselves queenless will make emergency cells, The foragers and the younger oriented bees from both sections will usually end up here by the end of the day. If there is flow they may do very well gathering it.

In the upper section there is the queen, but she will be without the huge number of younger number of bees she needs to go swarming off with. There are far fewer young oriented bees in the upper section (if they are oriented they've flown out and returned downstairs) and the remaining bees are all needed to tend the brood frames. The queen finding herself suddenly in possession of a lots of empty drawn comb real estate gets back in the egg-laying business, again.

At this point, you may think you needn't do anything more, just like when making a simple division, but you are wrong in this special instance. If you simply left things alone the queen and her colony may simply build back up to the critical mass needed for swarming. And then you'd have a late swarm, which is even more of a problem than a May/June swarm. So there are two more things you need to do: first, bleed off some of the original bunch of nurse bees that were transferred upstairs, using the paired doors. You do this about day 4 or 5. 

And then, and this is the most the most time-critical and important part: you've got to move the queen back downstairs again. You do this on day 7 through 8 (preferred time period) and not later than day 10 after the Snelgrove was deployed. Of course, this means you have to find her, but she will be easier to see in the by-then much-smaller colony and not so runny like she probably was just before a swarm. So you take the frame you find her on, plus one other frame of mixed-age brood (the characteristics of the second frame aren't terribly critical, so don't stress) and stick them temporarily in a nuc box.

Then you lift off the box(es) above the Snelgrove board, and the Snelgrove board itself. Find the two frames of brood that you put down below at the start and move them to the top box. If you have too many queen cells, I would reduce them to a smaller number. (It you have notched the frame a la OTS splitting you may have dozens of cells, which is why I generally don't notch in this instance. With notching, you can get a huge number of cells because the section is so overstocked with bees, like a cell-builder might be. At this time of year it's usually easy to find a frame with eggs and young larvae, so)

After moving the two frames to the upper box, take the queen and her frames out of the nuc and place them in the lower box in the middle. Install the Snelgrove board, again and plunk the upper section's box(es) back down on it.

Now, finally after more than a week, the swarm emergency is over and you're done! The queen, back in her old lair on the bottom should should settle down and get busy laying in all of that empty drawn brood comb. For a several weeks the colony will not have either the sequential capped brood resources, nor the requisite number of younger bees to make a swarm successful, so it will most likely just decide to give it a pass for the year. Upstairs, the bees with the capped queen cells which were moved up on the frames from below should carry on to select and a get a likely candidate out and mated. 

This is jut the Cliff's Notes version of what Wally Shaw recommends, so please read what he wrote (Part 3 is the section dealing with interrupting an imminent swarm, you want the Snelgrove II - Modified version, which is what I am basing my abbreviated description here on.) I keep a laminated copy of the whole document on my bee cart during swarm season so I can refer to it without having to back to the house and hunt it up on the computer. I found Shaw far easier to wrap my head around than Snelgrove's own writings. 

If you have still have questions, fire away. This is not hard to do, but it also is pretty demanding to get each detail - and the timing - exactly right. Since you are fighting the innate biology of the bees, this is not the right place for doing it in a half-hearted way. Do it right, or don't attempt it, for it will most likely not be successful and you will lose you one-and-only shot at keeping the bees. 

Nancy


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## aran

i have 1 question:
So the two frames of brood into bottom box in step one makes sense and the queen and the rest of the hive above with remaining brood i understand.
Where then is the room in the top box for the:" several empty drawn brood frames; and a liberal supply of nectar, honey and pollen frames"
-> if only two frames were removed initially to put into the bottom box does this mean i also have to remove other brood frames out into nucs ( with the queen cells) in order to have room to put in empty comb/nectar,pollen and honey frames? ( presumably there would be some food resources in the box already but would only be two empty slots for empty built comb frames).


Perhaps that is what you meant by "relieved of any queen cells"==> does this indicate that those frames are removed out into nucs with empty built comb frames being put back in their place?

Thansk again for the help i dont want to screw this up.


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## gww

Aron
I am not nearly as smart as nancy and I am sure she will correct me if I tell you wrong. You add a box to put those two frames in and use extra comb (if you have it for some more frames to fill the box with the two frames. 

The bees here are going to start queen cells. If you are in a flow, you add some more supers on top of the box with the two frames so all the foragers there can store what is coming in cause they don't have a lot of brood to take care of cause they have no queen, they have to make one. You then put a double screen board on the box and supers and set the whole rest of the hive on top of that board. You destroy all the queen cell up there cause if you didn't the virgins would hatch and kill you queen or they may even still swarm. The bottom with the two frames is making more queens. 

In 8 to ten days, those queens in the bottom will be capped and so you trade them with the queen from the hive sitting on top of the board. Two or three weeks later but after you know the virgins are mated, you can move the top hive any where you want and most of the foragers from it will strengthen the bottom part with the queen in it even more then it was.
If you wanted to make splits with brood frames from your other hives, you can use some of the extra queen cells that are on those two frames from the bottom that you are trading back for the queen that was in the top.
Clear as mud, right.
Cheers
gww


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## psm1212

aran: My only disagreement with Nancy's post is the need to read Wally Shaw's summary of Method II again. Nancy covers it better than Wally does. I have clipped Nancy's post and put it in my Snelgrove folder on Dropbox. Thanks Nancy.


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## gww

psm


> aran: My only disagreement with Nancy's post is the need to read Wally Shaw's summary of Method II again. Nancy covers it better than Wally does. I have clipped Nancy's post and put it in my Snelgrove folder on Dropbox. Thanks Nancy.


:thumbsup:
Cheers
gww


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## enjambres

GWW is absolutely correct - you add a box to the stack when doing this, it's not simply a division of what was there beforehand. This will require enough additional drawn frames - not foundation - to fill up the newly enlarged stack, as well. You can get away with using a frame or two of just foundation in the outer positions if you are really short. 

But you need mostly drawn empty comb in the lower box for when the newly back-in-lay queen is put back down there. You need a modest amount of stores below to cover any bad weather during the first week because you want the new queen to be well-fed, as well as the larvae on those two frames. 

Upstairs you want a good amount of stores because that part will shortly be losing all of its foragers for the duration, and there may be a lot of open brood that needs food. You also need empty drawn comb (a couple of frames, at least) upstairs because you want the bees and the queen to feel like they've got space to start more brood, as opposed to simply feeling crowded.

In my post I was focused on just the rough mechanics, and the why-does-it-work aspect. That's why I urged you to read the link I posted because that's where you would see details such as that the first step after you've got the hive apart is to place an empty box - with mostly drawn frames - on the base. I have found that adding a frame or two of stores to the lower box works well in my on-again/off-again upstate NY climate as insurance against that weather that's too-cold for the foragers to get fresh supplies for the uncapped brood on the frames they will be making queen cells in. And because this manipulation is done on an emergency basis, I sometimes can't pick a day with nice settled period afterward. I also think that leaving bees - especially a whole lot 'o bees - with a completely bare pantry can make them cranky. I value a quiet, unstressed yard, so I make sure they've got a nice meal or two to get them started on.

When I first used the Snelgrove board, I distilled the instructions down to a flow chart/checklist that I could use in the field. You may find that useful, too.

"Relieved of any queen cells" means you cut them off, or out, after a pretty thorough search. Shaw (and Snelgrove) describe culling only the mature ones. I figure I may miss some queen cups, but I remove every one that's definitely a queen cell, capped or not. If you have a lot to deal of them, and wanted to use a few of the cells for other purposes rather than cull them, that's OK too. But I would not start making up a lot of nucs with these frames and moving them around. At least some of those are likely to become cast swarms.

If your primary goal is to stop a late-stage swarm in its tracks (as opposed to making multiple splits) then at this point I would just focus on that. If you want to bust a hive down into nucs either get that done before they get swarmy, or do it later after they've settled back down. But in the context of a well-developed swarm plan, put your effort into stopping it. 

Also, of course, if you don't want even one additional colony you can recombine the two parts again, later. The safest way is to kill one of the queens and then do a newspaper combine. But you can get away with culling the new queen cell at the very last minute, or even as a virgin, and then let the upper section languish - as long as you dare - in a queenless state before combining them. You want the most amount of time you can risk to elapse before you add them back together so as to make sure that the reunited colony really has got over its desire to swarm. You don't usually get laying worker problems for 2 to 3 weeks after the last brood hatches, so you could have as long as a month. But it bears close watching before, and after, a recombine to make sure what you want to happen is what's actually happening.

Although this method works I regard it as an emergency-fix, not as the first-line way to prevent swarms. That I accomplish with a lot of attention to discouraging them from starting the swarm preps in the first place. I start as early as the first time I go into the hive after winter. I reverse and checkerboard and, later on, open the sides of the brood nest, etc., from April through May. 

Happy to answer any more questions as this is a process that works very well when done exactly as described, and not so much when you cut corners. It's a fair bit of work, and often at an inconvenient moment not of your choosing, to deploy the SB to stop a swarm. From my point of view if you're going to all this effort then invest your time in something that is likely to get the results you want. When people tell me they've used a SB and failed to stop a swarm it has invariably been a situation where they figured that some step or detail "didn't really matter", so they skipped it. After you've done this a few times and if you see ways that might improve things and are willing to risk failure, then try those options. 

Nancy


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## gww

Nancy
Yes, drawn comb is always my problim and until something dies or I have a good productive year that gives a few extra supers of comb, I can not follow the rules religiously. I am glad somebody can communicate the rules as simply as you do though. Simple english for a simple guy.
Thanks
gww


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## enjambres

Gosh, all my typos and run-on sentences enshrined in your drop box! If I have time in the next month I will try to make a cleaner, easier to follow, version. Feel free to save _that_.

Nancy


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## aran

thanks a bunch Nancy. I have a ton of spare supers with empty built comb so i should be ok to pull this off. Im also in upstate NY ( Rochester and i have a new property in Skaneateles im planning on putting bees at this year too).
->planning on post winter inspections as soon as its closer to 50deg. Hoping that will be late March early april. Weekly inspections and start the SB method 1 pre-emptively when?


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## gww

aran
If you are using the board to pre-empt before the bees decide on thier own they want to swarm, you would probly use it differrent (and easier) then what Nancy posted for after you see queen cells. I am very new and so take it with a grain of salt, but if you are going to do a pre-emptive split, you want to see drones in the hive. I am guessing that will be somewhere around two weeks into the first dandilion bloom. This is what I would look for with my knowlage so far for my area. Even that early drones would need to be seen in the hives.
I am new.
Cheers
gww


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## aran

yeah agreed mate I am planning the pre-emptive strike option but was just curious about a back up strategy if i find capped/charged queen cells during an inspection.
Realistically if this year is like last there wont be drones flying until mid April at my place i dont think.
I guess if there is plenty of drone brood when i do the inspections that would be time to start the pre-emptive strike perhaps.


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## gww

aran


> I guess if there is plenty of drone brood when i do the inspections that would be time to start the pre-emptive strike perhaps.


Somebody told me that it takes longer for drones to mature sexually then it does a queen and that the purple eyed stage of the drones are the earliest. I could not tell you what that looks like and so I just hope to see a few coming to the top of the frames when I inspect instead of just seeing brood. I don't know if this is a must but I do think it is safe if not too late.
Cheers
gww


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## enjambres

GWW is right again!

If you want to use the SB for making increase as a means of pre-empting the colony from getting swarmy in the first place, then you can use the method described in the earlier sections of the document I linked above. It is easier to do - and more tolerant of variations - since it it just a simple split. The main difference from other kinds of splits (of which there dozens, maybe hundreds of variations) is that the split stays on the same stand and because the hive "smell" remains the same afterwards you can very easily add, or remove, bees from one part or the other if you find you've gotten the mix not quite right.

I highly value these two characteristics because I feel it makes simple one-into-two splitting very easy and nearly fool proof, even for beginners. But I realize the tricky little doors make people anxious, even though they are quite easy to understand if you have a SB in hand. And, of course, you have to find the queen to set the boxes up. That terrifies some people even though you can use a shaker box, or multiple queen excluders inserted ahead of time to make the search easier. The good news is that using a SB to make increase can usually be planned in advance as opposed to a reactive thing when you find queen cells and know the hive has their bags nearly packed.

However I try to deter the colonies from wanting to swarm at all using various tactics from the very beginning of the working year. (Here that is last week of March through the first week or two of April, when temps have finally got high enough.) I start with reversing (at least twice before Memorial Day)with checkerboarded boxes placed on top of the brood nest. Then in April and May I will start to open the sides of the brood nest, as well. This suffices in most years for 75% of my colonies. I have some, though, that have itchy feet so I know in advance they will be more resistant to my efforts. From Mid-may (earliest swarm period most years) through middle of June (just before locust bloom) I look under every brood box in every stack every 5 to 7 days so as not to miss any preps. This is addition to routine inspections that I might be doing every couple of weeks to check on the brood pattern. Tipping boxes is the least intrusive way to keep very close tabs, because a two-week interval is more than enough time for the bees to go from toying with the idea to packed up and ready to go.

So I have 3 suggestions:

1) Research and make some plans to dampen the swarm urge in the first place. (writings of Walt Wright and MatDavey are good places to start.) Then you can postpone a Snelgrove-boarded split-to-make increase until you have good queen mating weather and lots of drones. Anti-swarm efforts really pay off in getting strong, well-fed as larvae and well-mated queens. I like to have the queens out and getting mated around the time of the Summer Solstice.

2) Download and print out the document I linked and go over it until you are comfortable with these two entirely different uses of the SB.

3) Set up a dummy stack of boxes and a SB in your living room and walk yourself through the steps, including the door manipulations, until you get what the process in each case should be.

Bonus tip: Use post-it notes stuck on the boxes during the manipulations noting the essential requirements for each box. I do and I find they are very useful - more useful than fumbling through a copy of Wally Shaw's paper while out in the bee yard, even though all the information is in there.

Nancy


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## psm1212

Nancy:

I know you and crofter both advised against doing this . . . but I had to try it for myself. SHOULD be capping queen cells today. I only tried it on two hives (so 4 nucs above SBs). Hard to get enough nurse bees packed into there to feel confident that they will make good QCs. I will post results.

Front of Hive








Rear of Hive


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## crofter

psm1212 said:


> Nancy:
> 
> I know you and crofter both advised against doing this . . . but I had to try it for myself. SHOULD be capping queen cells today. I only tried it on two hives (so 4 nucs above SBs). Hard to get enough nurse bees packed into there to feel confident that they will make good QCs. I will post results.
> 
> Front of Hive
> View attachment 37621
> 
> 
> Rear of Hive
> View attachment 37622


I dont see any problem with that setup.

I like the universal handhold locations on the center deep hive body. I have one exactly the same Not from that experience, but I did learn that it is not a good idea to pick up a box of bees upside down.


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## enjambres

I think the main problem will be that you can't really switch the doors around since you are using three faces of the hive from the get go. But that's mitigated by the fact that by dividing the upper section into two parts you are reducing the number of bees in each so maybe you won't need to siphon any off.

How did you modify the SB itself to make sure the nucs are each completely queen-tight and separate. That was where my design failed. I thought it was sealed but the bees felt otherwise, and at the end I had one nice new queen in a very crowded nuc and SHB living like lords in the undefended side.

(BTW, because Frank copied your post in its entirety and I knew him to be in Ontario I was flabbergasted when i thought he had made up the nucs _today_. Must slow down and read more carefully!)

Nancy


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## psm1212

enjambres said:


> How did you modify the SB itself to make sure the nucs are each completely queen-tight and separate. That was where my design failed. I thought it was sealed but the bees felt otherwise, and at the end I had one nice new queen in a very crowded nuc and SHB living like lords in the undefended side.
> 
> 
> Nancy


Nancy: I can still manipulate two separate pairs of doors for each chamber. I want to offset them, and time it so that the queens are not forced to return to the same side of the hive and into holes only 4 inches apart.


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## psm1212

crofter said:


> I like the universal handhold locations on the center deep hive body. I have one exactly the same Not from that experience, but I did learn that it is not a good idea to pick up a box of bees upside down.



I call it my "reversible" hive body. Most people buy it. It is the first hive body I ever built and you know it will last forever just to spite me. I get mad every time I see it.


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## crofter

psm1212 said:


> I call it my "reversible" hive body. Most people buy it. It is the first hive body I ever built and you know it will last forever just to spite me. I get mad every time I see it.


It was not my first hive body; I am starting to attribute that kind of thing to Oldtimers Disease!

Making the divided upper box bee tight is not my concern but I have to think it greatly compromises the ability to divert the bees where you want them to be efficient for both upper and lower hives. Keep in mind that the newly diverted bees in the lower box also have to be accommodated as that entrance is messed with. Honestly I have not thought it through to see if it contradicts any of Snelgroves basic bee logic. Too me it suggests more trouble than benefits, but give it a shot and see if you find any warts on the idea. 

If I want multiple queens from one split I use some of the other frames with cells produced and put them in separate mating nucs about 11 days after placing the division board. I think I have never seen less that three separate frames with cells on them.


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## psm1212

Thanks Frank. I have my doubts about how this is going to work out. I made these boards reversible (intentionally, this time) where the back side is not divided and will accept a normal 10-frame hive body. As Nancy said in another thread, it might just be "a split too far." I will keep you posted. Should have QCs capping today.


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## crofter

I lost one side of one of these divided hives over a winter and the bees may have moved over. The queen might have died etc. I will separate the entrances more when I set them up next but they seemed to be co existing quite well all summer and fall but I think I would not want returning queens to navigate such a puzzle. Even having one entrance front and one rear at the same elevation on a hive body location would be asking for possible trouble. Notice the extra hand hold.


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## Fivej

Nancy's Snelgrove instructions should be a sticky someplace. I know everyone hates too many forums, but one devoted to Swarm Control Methods might be worthy because there is a lot of information but it is scattered throughout the site. Or maybe a sub forum or sticky in the "splits" forum? 
I took a beginner's and intermediate class and swarm control methods did not get enough time devoted to it. Most beginners, myself included, have no idea how important swarm control is. It has been my biggest challenge to learn, especially the timing, and I know I am not alone. Thanks Nancy and everyone for your time and knowledge sharing. J


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## rangerpeterj

psm1212 I made a double nuc snelgrove board last year with several regular snelgrove boards . I had a different approach I used my 10 frame box with removable center divider on a modified SB .The plan was to get multiple frames of QC then go in on day 10 divide up the frames to two 4 frame slide in the divider to make two nucs. I have some pics in a thread of mine snelgrove board with double deep brood box 4/27/2017 #12. The problem I had was I only got one frame with QC on it ,and the virgin queen never came back from mating flight so I was never able to divide and slide the divider in. All my other SB vertical splits worked like a top, just like Nancy explained it to me last year. Thanks Nancy your the best Pete


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## Vance G

I am sure enjoying this thread. Thanks for a quality discussion. I am finding my knowledge of snelgrove boards was really incomplete to erroneous. Think I will start at the beginning and re read. Good stuff.


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## Vance G

enjambres said:


> I think the main problem will be that you can't really switch the doors around since you are using three faces of the hive from the get go. But that's mitigated by the fact that by dividing the upper section into two parts you are reducing the number of bees in each so maybe you won't need to siphon any off.
> 
> H


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## psm1212

enjambres said:


> I think the main problem will be that you can't really switch the doors around since you are using three faces of the hive from the get go.
> 
> Nancy


Not sure I am following you Nancy. Parent (Bottom) hive entrance oriented North. East Nuc and West Nuc on SB board. East nuc opened to South. West Nuc opened to West. In 5 to 7 days I close South Gate of East Nuc and open South paired gate below to Parent Hive, diverting foragers from East Nuc to Parent. Then open East gate to East Nuc. On same day, I close West gate to West Nuc and open gate below to Parent hive diverting West Nucs foragers to Parent Hive. Then open South Gate to West Nuc. On day 10 to 12, I reverse the process and leave alone until I find a laying queen in both nucs. I have thought about closing all gates to Parent hive on day 14 which would leave only the South Gate open on East Nuc and the West Gate open on West Nuc. That is only 2 holes at 90 degrees from one another. Maybe the mated queens find their ways back.


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## psm1212

crofter said:


> Notice the extra hand hold.


Watch it Frank. I can sue you for patent infringement!


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## psm1212

Ranger: Can you link that thread? I would like to read it. Cool design BTW.


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## enjambres

@PSM re doors: If you have three actively working doors on a stack with only four faces, your options are much more limited when you come to the point of doing the switch-around.

Changing the main entrance point on the bottom section (or even trying to move it to another surface) is probably not a good idea, because there is likely to be longstanding scent marking around it - making it a hard change to effect.

So that leaves you with the two nucs above but only three possible surfaces to work with. It can be done, but it will be less effective than when you have a single colony above and can move the entrance point from east to west, for example. The best you can hope for is around the corner east>north, and north>west. 

Even if you have two entrances on each side (as I did in my own design for my double-section Snelgrove boards) there is still less of a predictable effect from changing the doors around. And if you have doors on all four sides of the board, I caution you not to have the active/ working door to any part of the upper section during the period when your queen will be going out to mate on the same surface as the main door to the bottom section. It would be far too easy for a virgin queen leaving from, say, a south door on an upper section to fly back in to a south door _on the bottom section_. OOPS!

But as I mentioned above, with a twice-divided colony upstairs you may not even need to do much door switching. I find I almost never do any door switching, actually, as I have gotten better at judging the amount of brood to place in which section. It is mostly useful when you place a ton of brood in the upper section and would like to transfer those bees down into the lower box to take advantage of a honey flow. 

Good luck, and please let us know how this works out. I wasn't ever successful at it, even though it seemed to be _theoretically_ possible. I can't quite figure out why I can raise four, two-frame nucs in a queen castle and run stacked, MP-style double nucs over winter and yet, a pair of four-frame nucs over a SB for just a few weeks always resulted in the bees moving themselves - and only one queen - over to just one side. I have a stack of two dozen, custom-made, double-section Snelgrove boards with eight pairs of double doors apiece in my supply room. I find they work fine in the normal usage with an undivided 10-frame box above, but when I notice all those extra doors I am reminded of their cost, and I cringe.

Nancy


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## psm1212

I get it now Nancy. I would rather have it at 180 than 90 for sure. Not so much worried about the forager diversion, but could be a big deal with queen returns. Thanks.


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## rangerpeterj

I didn't have the problems with the doors because I would not have put the dividing slide in until day 10 after the QCs were capped and all the manipulations of bees were done. I will try this SB again this year I hope it works. psm1212 here is the link. Pete http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?336468-snelgrove-board-with-double-deep-brood-box


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## enjambres

@Ranger PJ:

FWIW, I, too, put the divider in only after the queen cells were capped in a single undivided deep. This was so that I could make sure that each section had a really good looking pair (or triplet) of cells and a good assortment of other stores. The divider was completely bee-tight (and taped-up after the first round of failures) so they weren't scootching in under, or around, the divider. Somehow they had to all drift from one side over to the other and abandon the maturing queen cell and some brood, which I found in more than a few cases. I found that completely unexpected, and inexplicable. 

There was something I didn't understand going on in those splits. That's why I am keen to hear of others' experiences and hope to learn of success. 'Cause I really want to find a use for all those fancy (and very expensive) custom-designed, double-chamber Snelgrove boards. Sometimes I use them now just to lift the telecover up a bit when I'm feeding. 

Nancy


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## rangerpeterj

Nancy Thank you for the info, last year when we talked about these boards failing I mistaken the failure was the virgins squeezing past the divider. I thought in my mind that couldn't be a problem my divider fits so tight all the way top to bottom sides good and tight, but this drift idea makes sense with the divided bees all smelling the same. I did not get that far last year do to only one frame of QCs in the 10 frame box. Pete


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## crofter

I have a hunch...well a bit more than a hunch, that the bees also work on a scent trail. They dont like the smell of methyl salicilate (oil of wintergreen) as in infra rub arthritis creme. If you want to discourage use of an entrance and get them to accept another, slather the creme around the old location and it will motivate them. I have used it in the fall to get them moved around from rear to a front entrance

I think they geo locate to get close to the right hive entrance then scent takes over. With shared scent because of the screening, it does not take much to get a returning queen in the wrong quarters. Once a parade starts the bees will follow the trend so that could result in migration of workers too. Haven't had it happen with my snelgrove setups but then I have never tried to mate more than one queen into the upper location.


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## psm1212

Update: Checked all four nucs and have capped Queen cells in all four. I did door manipulations today to divert foragers down to bottom hive. Probably do another manipulation in 3 or 4 days. On day 12, I plan on closing off all Snelgrove gates to the bottom section and leave each nuc with an open gate that is 180 degrees opposite of the other nuc's gate. Will keep you posted.

On a side note, I also did a regular Snelgrove split with 6 other hives. Found out today that I somehow messed up the last one I did and left the queen in the top box. Bottom box was full of queen cells. I aborted the Snelgrove split and divided up four frames of capped cells into 4 new nucs and moved them to another yard. I bet I don't have but around 1000 bees in each, but at this point I suppose they are nothing more than mating nucs and don't need a large population.


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## Fivej

psm: Might as well make lemonaide. J


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## gww

Psm
Thanks very much for the update.
gww


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## rangerpeterj

I hope everything goes well getting them queens hatched and mated back in the right box. Good luck Pete


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## aran

i made a new 8 F snelgrove board this weekend for the one 8 frame hive i have. All the rest of my hives are 10 F...dont ask.
Now to wait for some warm weather to put the SBs into action.


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## enjambres

@Aran



> I made a new 8 F snelgrove board this weekend


Boy, how I wish I could do that! I buy unassembled shims from Betterbee with _pre-drilled holes_ and the screws in little plastic bags - that's the extent of my "carpentry" skills.

Nancy


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## aran

actually nancy im at best a poor carpenter. Im a gastroenterologist for a real job lol.
I enjoy monkeying around building the bee stuff though. Took me a couple hours probably total. I just copied one of my purchased 10 F SBs. Relatively easy thankfully.


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## Fivej

This graphic vid may help others. For me, it makes it more understandable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky0nTQfyPSs


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## aran

gww said:


> aran
> If you are using the board to pre-empt before the bees decide on thier own they want to swarm, you would probly use it differrent (and easier) then what Nancy posted for after you see queen cells. I am very new and so take it with a grain of salt, but if you are going to do a pre-emptive split, you want to see drones in the hive. I am guessing that will be somewhere around two weeks into the first dandilion bloom. This is what I would look for with my knowlage so far for my area. Even that early drones would need to be seen in the hives.
> I am new.
> Cheers
> gww


yeah that sounds very reasonable. I used the pre-emptive strike method last year and it worked well.


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## karenarnett

Just curious. Great thread here. Where do folks buy their Snelgrove boards or do most of you just build them yourselves? Looking for recommendations on quality board. Woodenware is very variable in quality these days. I've been disappointed a lot with purchases from a top name dealer - namely Kelly.


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## aran

i bought my first one from mann lake. Then i used it as a template to build more myself. They are actually relatively easy to make and cheap. Maybe $5 worth of scrap timber and hardware cloth.


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## enjambres

Mine are mostly from Betterbee, though I paid a local woodworker to make me some that - in theory, at least - would allow two colonies in the upper section. Betterbee makes a very nice board, with less screened area than MannLake's model. Is that better, or worse. I don't know. MannLake's is almost all screen and has some internal supports between the screens. Betterbee's screened area is much smaller and doesn't have internal supports so you have to be careful not to accidentally collapse the space between the screens when cleaning them. 

Both cost about the same, I think.

Nancy


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