# terrible swarming issues in midwest??



## Phesic (May 8, 2015)

I have 2 hives that are new this year that have not had problems. Know of another bee keeper that has 3 and while we captured a swarm we have not had any swarm on us. The local bee keeper association has had at least 3 new swarm, but I feel that is because they are out of room in the hives.


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## jdmidwest (Jul 9, 2012)

I have not received a swarm call since early May. My neighbor said a swarm came out of one of my hives right after I did splits in early May. 

Another local keeper has caught 2 swarms this year in traps, but they were all about the same time, early May.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

No, not really, but we rarely have issues with swarming.

Crazy Roland


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## acbz (Sep 8, 2009)

Brian Suchan said:


> Anyone else seeing a lot higher than normal swarming and supersedure this year. Poor weather???


Yes, and I'd really like for somebody to tell me what I am doing wrong. For the third time in two years, my operation is being hit hard by a massive amount of swarming (majority of my hives). I run about 600 hives in Wisconsin and Florida seasonally for honey production and also shake package bees in the spring time in Florida. My single largest problem is swarming and I am baffled as to what is causing this. 

I run all 7 5/8" size equipment in double brood chambers. 

Here are the steps I took in Florida this spring in hopes of preventing massive swarming from happening this summer:
1.) Re-queened all hives in February while making splits, the majority with Latshaw hybrid stock and the rest with Caspian stock. Good queen cells from Miksa. Dribbled oxalic at checkbacks to get an early season mite cleanup and avoid potential queen issues from other miticides. 

2.) When pulling citrus honey crop, pulled honey out of every brood chamber and inserted empty combs to give queen more space for laying.

3.) Shook an average of 3 lbs of bees from every hive in Florida in late April for packages before going north. This really knocks back the populations for a while. 

4.) Once placed on summer locations in WI in mid May, I went through most brood chambers and thinned out anything that looked overly strong or had swarm cells started...ie pulled out brood and replaced with empty comb, and/or moved frames of open brood up above the excluder to draw nurse bees away from the brood nest. 

5.) Gave everything a fat dose of thymol gel in late May to knock them back a bit and supered up anything that looked like it needed room or would need room. 

6.) Pulled excluders on some of the hives in order to do a side-by-side comparison. Result? They just built more swarm cells higher up in the honey supers. 

Mite levels are in check. Bees looked fantastic upon first round of checking here in Wisconsin. Now a lot are swarmed down to dinks. We did have a long period of cool and rainy weather during the first half of June, but there were sunny warm days interspersed with the rainy days. 

What is causing this, and what more could I do to prevent it?? Massive swarming is killing my summer crops. Something has to change. Bad weather?? Four month-old queens are not supposed to do this. Please tell me what I am doing wrong. 

Aaron


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

First, where in Wisconsin are you?

Crazy Roland


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

He has to be West of you and East of me... Here in the Wisconnesota area there have been plenty of swarm reports. We have had lots of rain and there is plenty of forage.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

Give the tim ives method a try when you put the supers on put a box of foundation down and drawn comb over it, do this a little earlier than what you are now, it will give the wax makers something to do


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Well Adrian, since you are about as west as you can get, and I am by the big puddle, you must be right.


having only used single deep brood chambers, I can only speculate on what is happening in his multiple smaller supers. I speculate that they "felt" crowded, whether the beekeeper thought so or not. I would also advise better control of the genetic makeup of the bees. Start selecting for not-swarming bees, and raise your own queens.

Crazy Roland


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

acbz said:


> Yes, and I'd really like for somebody to tell me what I am doing wrong. For the third time in two years, my operation is being hit hard by a massive amount of swarming (majority of my hives). I run about 600 hives in Wisconsin and Florida seasonally for honey production and also shake package bees in the spring time in Florida. My single largest problem is swarming and I am baffled as to what is causing this.
> 
> I run all 7 5/8" size equipment in double brood chambers.
> 
> ...


That's some pretty intensive management Aaron. A couple thoughts. Firstly are you using some Carni stock? They do have a tendency to get swarmy at times. Secondly, the late thymol dose might be masking the pheromones of your young queens. I'd do a side by side on that much as you did with the excluder.
To answer the OP. Actually no swarming to speak of this year at all, though our bees were quite light coming out of Texas so I'm not at all surprised. Young queens will usually do the trick but if your brood nest starts plugging up it can still be "Katie bar the door".


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## Beeslave (Feb 6, 2009)

Hives reach a point where they expand rapidly. 1 or 2 Supers is not enough. Keeping them compact to make brood work easier will start swarming. I had a few yards that got swarmy because we had the best spring flow I've seen and they filled 2 Supers(6 5/8" on top of a 1 1/2 story) faster then expected. The good producing yards that had another 2-3 Supers put on top of the first 2 earlier had a lot less swarming issues. These were knocked down to 3 frames of brood and 6 frames of bees late march. 

Stack 'em tall early.


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## RAK (May 2, 2010)

Aaron, Hard to say what your doing different since I run Doubles and singles with only 10% swarming on a bad year. Usually the few queens we don't requeen. I requeened some of my hives with Miskas and have queens hitting the trees at a few months old. The other queens we used from N Cal are doing great in singles with excluder. Some are working their 5th deep honey super. Don't know what you Florida beekeepers are breeding. Get some mated queens and test them out.


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## zhiv9 (Aug 3, 2012)

Harley Craig said:


> Give the tim ives method a try when you put the supers on put a box of foundation down and drawn comb over it, do this a little earlier than what you are now, it will give the wax makers something to do


I find that the swarmy hives aren't really producing white wax. Large population and no white wax is a good sign that they are in swarm prep.


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## zhiv9 (Aug 3, 2012)

2 weeks ago we had a 2-3 days or rainy weather in a row right as the flow is about to start and it sent about 20% of our colonies into swarm prep. Most had a lots of room in the supers and some below.


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## acbz (Sep 8, 2009)

jim lyon said:


> That's some pretty intensive management Aaron. A couple thoughts. Firstly are you using some Carni stock? They do have a tendency to get swarmy at times. Secondly, the late thymol dose might be masking the pheromones of your young queens. I'd do a side by side on that much as you did with the excluder.
> To answer the OP. Actually no swarming to speak of this year at all, though our bees were quite light coming out of Texas so I'm not at all surprised. Young queens will usually do the trick but if your brood nest starts plugging up it can still be "Katie bar the door".


I'm in west central WI. They were given plenty of extra room and nothing ran out of space for honey. I have a few frames of foundation blended into most of my honey supers as well, but I didn't put on a single box of straight foundation since that definitely seems to induce swarming. The breeder queens for these cells came from Ohio and Canada and we don't have any africanized problem in central Florida where I'm at. Actually I received several comments on how gentle my bees were during package shaking. I used Latshaw carni/italian stock which I believe is a pretty popular stock these days, the Caspian stuff I don't know much about other than it came from BC. Jim, last spring I compared using Apiguard on half and a single MAQS pad on the other half for a spring soft treatment and didn't see any difference (bad swarming both groups). The few that haven't swarmed are working on their third or fourth 7 5/8" honey super now. RAK, what you said is about the only thing I have thought of that I can do differently. Thanks
Aaron


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

I suspect that despite our best efforts, the swarmy African genes have infiltrated the queen breeding world. Those that stay north get them cleansed every winter, but those snow birds down south are not as lucky. Do you track where the queens in each hive come from?

Crazy Roland


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## acbz (Sep 8, 2009)

Roland said:


> I suspect that despite our best efforts, the swarmy African genes have infiltrated the queen breeding world. Those that stay north get them cleansed every winter, but those snow birds down south are not as lucky. Do you track where the queens in each hive come from?
> 
> Crazy Roland


I do have each pallet marked for which queen stock it has. The Caspians build up huge and swarm like crazy. The Italian/carniolan hybrids not quite as swarmy but still unnacceptably high. Just hoping for a decent basswood flow, I've seen small dinky swarmed out hives make a box on a decent flow so there is still hope I suppose.


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## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

Based on swarm calls, this year is way down compared to last year.


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

acbz,

We had heavy swarming in our area this year. This spring the triggers seemed to be a great spring build up followed by crazy temperature fluctuations. We would go from cool, almost cold to 90's in a matter of days. It seemed to be those hot days that was the tipping point. The hot temps with so much nectar drove the bees nuts. 

I winter a lot of double nucs in styrofoam. My goal is to get them transferred into deadouts. Their growth was explosive this spring. I managed to stay ahead of most. They were transferred into doubles and 2-3 supers added a few days later. They filled the 2-3 supers in short order and some an additional super or deep (ran out of supers). Hate those deeps up on top...

It is a personal insult to me when my inseminated queens build up and swarm. I don't do anything special for swarm control except to pile on the supers early and stand back. This girls can be real powerhouses but I also like to select the older queens, 2,3,4 years old that have run a production colony and stayed put. The cross Carniolan/Italian hybrid you used is my personal favorite and hard to beat when it comes to making a crop.


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## acbz (Sep 8, 2009)

Joe, I've heard only good things about your hybrid stock and intend to keep on using it. Other people around here are also experiencing swarming problems which leads me to believe your theory on the temp fluctuations. The bees built up great in FL and most really needed to have a package shaken out of them by late April. They arrived to WI and it was cold enough for a week that I could move bees in broad daylight without them flying much. Then it warmed up and things started to pop, then two weeks of rain/sun/rain in early June. Last year I placed the blame on old queens and a lot of foundation in the honey supers...this year it had to be something else. 

Glad to hear your bees have already put on a crop. Do soybeans yield where you are at? They don't here. 

Aaron


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## TonyRussell (Jun 26, 2015)

Aaron, 

As you know we have bees coming out of Florida in the spring and going into North Dakota and Wisconsin for the summer. Going into citrus this year the bees were very strong and big, with swarming being a good possibility. Coming out of citrus we had 0 swarm issues and the queens were stable. All of our queens coming from a line of Miksa stock. SO, all hives to this point have went through the same regime, 0 swarming, stable queens, and are healthy. Now the same bees make the trip north, some traveling to Wisconsin and some to North Dakota. 

North Dakota: 0 swarming with good healthy stable queens

Wisconsin: Lots of queen issues and swarming. My diagnosis is less of swarming and more of just messed up queens. At first glance it appeared to be swarming but when digging deeper it seemed to be more of supersedure, queen failure, queen death ect... Very hard to describe in words but it seemed to me the problems were more of messed up queens; with swarming being rolled into it. 

Final thoughts: 
It is not your beekeeping, the genetics of the bees, the queens, or anything else for that matter. It's WISCONSIN. Plain and simple. What about Wisconsin that makes the bees do this? Weather, environment, time of bloom, changes in farming????? It's a mystery to me. As for suggestions on how to combat this, I have none. As you know you can run yourself ragged with swarm control and it doesn't seem to work a lot of the time in Wisconsin. I am writing this with an unbiased opinion and this is from first hand experiences and observations. 

Best of luck, 
-Tony


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## JSL (Sep 22, 2007)

Aaron,

I always appreciate feedback on the queens! They are working girls and must perform in commercial operations. This has been another strange season for us, but what is new? It seemed like everything bloomed at once this spring, so the crop went on all of a sudden. With all of the rain we have had for the past few weeks, they are lucky to make any forward progress, but surprisingly are still gaining. Ironically, honey is a pain for me.  I have to take all of it off to dig down into the breeders to pull grafting material.

Soybeans don't seem to produce around here. Some say they do, but I don't really see the bees working them or any significant flow. Maybe if everything is right they will produce...

Jim mentioned Carnies being more prone to swarming. I think that is true of some lines, and used to think that, but now I think management can really help that. My Carnies usually outproduce the Italians. The Carnies just seem to work harder and take advantage of the shorter strong flows. IF the timing is right and supers prevent plugging out the brood nest, I get better production out of the Carnies. It really just boils down to your management style and what type of bee you like to run!

Best wishes.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Tony - maybe us old Wisconsin beekeepers have adapted to the conditions here and have few swarming problems.

Our queens from last year and the year before a just now starting to be superceded, at about a 5 percent level. As for the this years purchased lots of queens, some are real good, others are terrible. The price difference between a Strachan NWC and a run of the mill queen is money well spent.

Crazy Roland


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## suttonbeeman (Aug 22, 2003)

Brian,
I run bees from orange to Ky. I seldom have swarming issues but have had about 4 years it drove me nuts. First one was back around 1997 BEFORE I was migratory. The others,were this year, last year and 3 yrs ago. They all had this in common. Good strong hives, lots and lots rainy cool weather just as flow was starting and on days when they flew a little there was good nectar shake. They all had lots room and last two yrs we pulled brood out making new hives during the rainy weather to try to stop it. Result was they built more cells,and swarmed. EVERY year that Ive seen cool rainy wet nasty weather at begining of flow I see bees in trees. Everyone here has had the same issue. The ones that didnt swarm have 5 to 8med boxes. Needless to say I used some foul language back a month ago


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