# How do you stop a captured swarm from reswarming?



## Tommy Tip Top (May 27, 2011)

Last week I captured a large swarm and hived them. I fed them straight away but by the end of the day, they had gone. 
Any suggestions how I could prevent this happening in the future?


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## Pugs (Jul 15, 2004)

Give them a frame of brood & eggs.

Pugs


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## Batman (Jun 7, 2009)

+1 on that. BEST glue I know of. 
I always put a frame in when I hive a swarm. The one time I couldn't, I had to leave for work and quite literally JUST took them down before I had to leave, I put a QE under the hive to keep her in. The swarm left and landed on my neighbors roof, the queen was dead inside the hive on the excluder. It almost looked as if they tried to pull her through it and it killed her, because she was wedge in there pretty good. I did recover the swarm the next morning and gave them a frame of brood and they raised a new queen. I know that so people like to requeen swarms when they catch them, but dang, I did it the hard way.

C2


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## WilliamsHoneyBees (Feb 17, 2010)

I am the one beekeeper that you will hear from that does not like to give a swarm a frame of brood. My reasons why.

1. Swarms draw foundation like mad! Especially if the queen has no where to lay.
2. When giving swarms a frame of brood you are allowing the mite life cycle to continue. I like to let them start from scratch so the cycle is broke and they start with almost 0 mites. If the swarm hasn't built up much in a month or two I add it to another swarm that was done the same way.

I throw them in a box, screen the entrance for a day or two and feed the daylights out of them. Works well for me.


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## Batman (Jun 7, 2009)

Dan,

They will still build comb like no one else, but you did just give me an idea. Perhaps instead of a QE for a day, because I do agree that a break in the mite cycle would only bee a good thing, but perhaps in a 10 frame deep (what I use), I could put a 2 frame feeder, and place a ventilation screen on top of the hive, plus build a 2nd screen with #8 hardware cloth, making all 4 sides the same size, so there is no gap like there is on the top vent screen, place it under the hivebody to hold them in for a day or so. 

C2


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## baldwinbees (Mar 2, 2010)

queen excl. doesnt work.Queen is smaller to be able to fly.I've watched her crawl through them.They will leave a frame of honey,a frame of brood,empty drawn comb&even their own comb from cut-outs.Like P R F said,screen the entrance for a few days with a frame of honey or feed seems to work best for me


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## Beagler (Aug 18, 2008)

I had this problem before also, since they wanted to be hard to deal with I exercised my queen catching skills and put her in an old queen cage and put some extra candy in the hole. They released her like a normal queen in a few days and she stayed. When I did this they had me flustered and if it hadn't worked I would have been OK with losing them.


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