Laurence Edwards checks his Flow Hive a week after a Demaree split to prevent swarming. The top box has no emergency queen cells, the bottom box is fully drawn with eggs and a healthy queen, and the split worked. He also deals with an 8-frame box that doesn't fit right.
7 days ago, I was in this apiary and I did a video showing you how to avoid swarming in a Flow Hive. I wanna do a follow-up video on that today just to show you what happens after 7 days, what the bees have done upstairs in the brood area that you lifted up above the super, what the bees have done downstairs in their new brood area that was full of foundation, just to give you that snapshot for 7 days later, because after that manipulation, the following 7 days are the most important time to make sure that your bees don't swarm. So I'll get my bee suit on, I'll get my smoker lit, and I'll go and show you what happens after you've done that manipulation after 7 days. Let's start off with the top box because that's where all the action should be and that's where we've got work to do. So nowhere near as much action upstairs, and you've not got angry bees up here. You've got the majority of nurse bees that are coming out up here, and then they transition down to the new brood area where the queen is laying eggs. So if you open it up and you think, where have all my bees gone? Don't worry, this is normal. The brood's gonna emerge, it's gonna They'll turn this up here into a second super, and we'll deal with that later on in this series. But this is exactly what I'd be expecting to see. Right, so these bees have completely let me down because they've not made any emergency cells. And you know what, it's quite handy for them to do that because obviously it means I don't have to go through and take them all down. But it also shows you that they don't make emergency cells every single time. What you need to do though, still go through every single frame in that top box, shake off the bees. If there are emergency cells, and I'll show you what an emergency cell looks like now, you need to go through, take down every single one. If you're not sure, take it down. Don't leave one. They will swarm if you leave a single one. Sometimes though, they don't make them. Really handy when they don't, but don't be fooled into thinking they haven't made them because they do like to tuck them away a little bit. Right, so I've been through that top box. No emergency cells. I've showed you what they look like. If you're following this method, make sure you take them all down. Let's go downstairs now into the new brood box, show you how the bees have drawn that out. Remember, that was all foundation barring one frame one week ago. Let's see if we've got eggs, let's see if we've got brood, let's see how far they've expanded, let's see what the colony is looking like. So this is generally what you'd expect in the new brood area to see after a week— lots and lots of bees. All the nurse bees from the top boxes are going to merge down and transition to where that new brood is. Let's get inside, see how the Bees are getting on. Just before we do that, one of the things that annoys me like nothing else in beekeeping is when equipment doesn't fit very well. What is the reason for that gap? There's absolutely no reason why there should be a gap there. It's supposed to be an 8-frame box, got 8 frames in there, and then I've got kind of like a half-frame gap. Very strange. Even more annoying, if it's 8-frame, it should be 8-frame. I don't care what the outside dimensions are, the inside dimension should work really well and not mean that I have to fix it by putting in like a dummy board or any sort of frame in there, because it makes my life so much more difficult. Just bring it in half an inch, maybe even an inch there in some places. If it's 8-frame kit, it should be 8-frame kit. Right, I won't go through all the frames in here, but wow, they have drawn out every single frame. Loads of honey, loads of pollen, loads of eggs, and give it another week or so and there'll be loads of capped brood as well. So really happy with what I'm seeing down here, and you can see how it's a very effective swarm management technique, 'cause it's constantly giving the bees extra work. Bees like to swarm when they've got nothing to do or they run out of space. Give them foundation, always slows things down. So there's my queen, she's definitely not swarmed. See if I can give you a little close-up, see if you can get in there, see the eggs. Lovely frame of eggs there though, loads of pollen. Every single sheet of that foundation has been drawn out. They've done that in less than 7 days. Just goes to show how well that Demaray split works at stopping them swarming, but also getting foundation drawn out. The bees are on an absolutely crazy flow at the moment. Lots of nectar in the brood box only means one thing, they need some space up there in the super. So make sure you subscribe to the channel, 'cause the next video that's coming is how to extract honey from a flow super. So there we go, I've showed you the top box, I've showed you the bottom box. These bees are fully set now to give me a bump a honey crop in that Flow Super. We'll do that in the next video, but I hope that one was useful for you, and I hope you give it a go throughout the beekeeping season.
