How To Grow Strong Colonies Without Swarming | Simple Steps for Fast and Stable Hive Growth

If you want to set your colonies up for rapid growth but make sure they don't swarm early in the season, this is the technique for you. Let's jump straight in and I'll show you how well these colonies are getting on towards the end of February in the UK. So the first thing you'll notice on this colony here is that the feeder is full to the brim with bees, absolutely full. This indicates a lack of space. Now if I was to leave this nucleus colony here just on its own in the box that it's in, I reckon they would swarm before the weather picked up To enable me to put another box on top. That's the standard process here, that's what's easy, that's what the textbooks say, which is this is your brood box. In the spring, if you want to expand, you put another brood box up here. So just like that, I've got another brood box here, and I'll show you what the standard setup is for spring growth now. So dead simple, what you do is you remove the feeder. Hello bees, we've not seen you in a while. And then we place the new brood box on top. Hello. And then we put our feeder back on like that, and we put our roof on. That's the manipulation complete. But this setup here is not good for spring expansion. If you do this manipulation in the middle of April or the end of April, early May, absolutely fine, no problem at all. You've got a brood box down there, the original brood box, you've got your new brood box up here, and then you've got your feeder. However, if you wanna turbocharge your colonies, you would like to do this kind of middle of Feb, back end of Feb, and start feeding the bees. Now, if you live somewhere where it's beautiful and warm and there's tons of pollen coming in, you get loads of flying days, and most importantly, you've got really good nighttime temperatures, which means that the bees can brood up and maintain that cluster overnight with no detrimental impact on the new brood, then this system here is all that you need. However, it is not like that in the UK, and I find a lot of people will restrict the colonies down so much that there's no space That when they say to them in April, right, go, the bees aren't able to respond to it because they've not been given space early enough. So let's rejig this setup now and I'll show you exactly how I would set this colony up. And don't go anywhere, in this video I'm going to piece together back end of February, middle of March, early April, and I'm going to show you just how well these colonies expand going through the spring with this new setup. First off though, let's take it down. I'll show you inside the colony. Let's find the queen, let's find some brood, And then let's set this colony up to turbocharge them for the spring. A pretty much perfect nuc, still got loads of stores available. Don't want to be feeding this one up just yet, but they are really, really struggling for space. Oh, there we go, I found my queen. So she is an island-mated Buckfast queen. Number 42. Show on that camera there. See the queen over here. Again, on that camera. There we go. So there's my queen. That's very, very good news. So I'm just going to pop my queen up here for the time being to get all of this set up without her. So this is how simple this manipulation is. It is the easiest manipulation in the world. I'll do the manipulation and then I'll tell you why it's such a good technique to get into the habit of doing if you want rapid growth in the spring. And you wanna make sure that your bees do not swarm. So all we do, and before I go any further, it's worth saying you can do this on nucs, you can do this on full-size hives as well. So it will work on any hive that is modular where the brood box is separate. I'm just doing it on nucs to show you the technique. So all you do, take your brood box off to one side. You place your new brood box into position there, and you can see all I've got in here. So I've just got 6 sheets of brand new foundation. You can use drawn comb in here as well, just use whatever you've got. And then I'm just going to take this brood box here, the original brood box, and I'm just going to place that directly on the top just like that. That's the manipulation complete. I'm going to get the queen frame back in there now, place the queen in there, get the feeder back on, put the lid on, and I'll tell you why this is such an awesome technique to turbocharge your colonies in the spring. So there's my queen. I hate putting the last frame with the queen back in, so all I'll do is I'll just pick up the queen and she can wander off over there. You can see she'll just kind of go down into that crack. So she's safe over there. Not gonna squish her now. And then all I'm gonna do, I'm just gonna shake these bees off here, shake them in. Easiest way of doing it. Means I can show you a little bit of the brood as well. So nice pattern of brood from that queen there. Let's get this colony all set up. So as you can see, big chunky fat colony of bees. Really, really nice. I don't think that they would have been in there if I'd have just left them for another 4 or 5 weeks. Something like this was needed to ensure that the bees had sufficient space to grow. Right, so we're all set back up again now. Why is this technique so much better than the other way around? Let me recap. This bottom box here is a box full of frames and foundation with no bees in it. This box here, this is my original brood box. So original brood box, new brood box. If we flipped it up the other way and we had all of the bees downstairs and this was just the box of foundation and frames, I'm distancing the bees from their feeder. So if I need to feed them, they've got to go all the way from here up to the top There. If it's too cold, they will not do that, so you lose the ability to feed your bees, and feeding bees means that you get rapid growth. So this colony now is set up perfectly for that. The bees are up here, the feeder's there, the bees are nice and cozy, and they're right next to their feeder. The second issue with doing it the other way around too early is if you put all of your bees downstairs at the bottom, all of the heat that's generated by these bees down here is being lost Upwards. If I got an infrared camera and kind of come back this evening, what you would see in this colony is that the top part is the hottest, the bottom part is the coolest, because of the way that I've set this up. But if I was to flip it around the other way, what you would see is all of the heat is downstairs and it's just rising upstairs, meaning that the bees are going to have a real battle to try and keep the brood that they're creating warm enough. You want to work with the bees and not work against the bees. This setup here Is perfect. The bees have got access to the feeder. I've separated all of the bees from the cold entrances below, so any winds or gusts coming in are not going to affect my bees. They're in the warmest part of the hive, which means that the warmth that they create works towards keeping them warm. They're not losing it to another part of the beehive. Those 3 things all in connection with one another mean that when I start feeding this colony here, they will expand and they will just move downwards onto all of these new frames down here. Perfect expansion early on in the spring. However, and this is what sets this technique apart, it's the end of February at the moment. Let's say we get another beast from the east. Let's say it turns from 15 degrees C like it is today and goes back to minus 10. This setup here is perfect for that scenario. It mitigates the impact of that scenario very, very well. So if the bees get super, super cold or the weather gets cold and the bees don't know what to do and they stop brooding, The bees are here, they're in the warmest part of the hive, they're away from all of the wind, they're next to the feeder. Especially important if it gets super, super cold and the bees can't move and they need to feed on syrup, or they need to feed probably on fondant if it's that cold. You're mitigating that risk very, very well. But it also works with the setup if it goes to 20 degrees next week. The bees have got plenty of space to expand, space for brood, space for food, space for nectar, space for pollen. All of that space downstairs without bringing any of the negatives that you might get by putting that brood box on top. So I'm going to do it with the colony next door as well. I'm going to leave these bees here for 4 weeks, and in this video we're going to come straight back and I'll show you just how well these bees have grown in 4 weeks' time. Let's fast forward to that now. So it's been 3 weeks since I put that brood box underneath these colonies here. We underbrooded. In that time, I've had hundreds comments from people saying that is the wrong way to do it. Bees move up, they don't move down. You're going to set those bees back. What are you doing? And I'm back here today to show you that that is not the case. Believe it or not, I have actually done this before. I wouldn't be giving out recommendations and advice if I didn't think it was the right thing to do. Wait until you see inside these colonies here. They are booming. So just to summarize what we did previously, this box here was the original box, that top box. That's where the queen was. That's where all the brood was. We took another box, this box down here at the bottom, and we added in six frames of foundation. So all of the foundation at the bottom, and then the queen and the brood and everything up at the top, right next to that feeder. The idea being if it's cold, the bees cluster up and everything is good. If it's warm, the bees can expand, and the only way they can expand is downwards. Makes sense. Let's get in, see how they're getting on. Let the bees know I'm here. Right, let's get into this one first. So what we were seeing last time was bees up in the feeder. We gave them some feed, and as you can see, every last bit of that fondant is now gone. Very, very good to see. So we shake those bees out. They've taken down a kilogram of fondant in about 2 and a half weeks. Now check that out there. That is a sure sign that they need space. They're putting drone brood in that gap there. Only big colonies produce drone brood, and they produce it up here when they need space. So if I've got this right, we should have a big strong colony that's completely drawn out all of those boxes below. But first, let's have a look at what they've done at the top. So looking good and looking a little less congested compared to what it looked like previously. So let's get that first frame out. Not quite as many bees on that top, but check that out. That is a nice frame. Brood in all stages, bees covered in pollen, tons and tons of brood. Lots and lots of brood. So for anyone thinking it's setting the colonies back, does that look like a colony that's been set back? No. But the proof of the pudding is going to be in that bottom box. I just want to show you this top box first. Covered, brood in all stages, every single frame so far. And not just any old brood in all stages, we're talking beautifully compact. Tons and tons of brood. Really interesting observation here. Look in between those cells of brood, they're backfilling. This means they're struggling for space, which is a good thing if you get in there before they start to swarm. And it doesn't look like they've swarmed here, and they've definitely not swarmed yet. But look at that, completely pollen-bound. That is a, that is a wonderful pollen frame. That's the kind of pollen frame you go and put Somewhere nice in the freezer maybe to use for your queen rearing. That is a superb pollen frame. But if you've got this far in the video, you want to see what's downstairs in this bottom box, so let's do that now. Remember, this box 2 and a half weeks ago was just frames of foundation. There were no bees on it, it was not drawn out, it was just new frames and wax foundation. Let's have a look what they've done now. So for anybody who said this definitely wasn't going to work, take a look at that. Completely drawn out. And not only drawn out, laid up with eggs. So every single little bit of that frame there has been drawn out. But not only that, you know, that's one frame, isn't it? Let's see what the rest of the frames are looking like. Frame number 2. Completely drawn out, full of eggs. Frame number 3, the edge frame, just completely drawn out. Give it like a 95% drawn out. Number 4, maybe 80% drawn out. Back up into the 90s, got eggs in that one. And that one there, probably back down to 80% again. So there we go, it works. What's next on this colony here? Really, really simple. It's still cold, and I'm gonna do the exact same thing again. So brand new empty brood box underneath. So now we have empty brood box with just friends and foundation. That's the newly added one from last week or a couple of weeks ago, so that one's all fully drawn out now, full of eggs. And then this final one that's going on, that is the original brood nest, and then that can go on like that. I'm not going to feed them because they are getting so much natural forage at the moment. I don't need to feed them. I might as well save a little bit of money, try and slow these bees down. Rapid, rapid expansion. You can do it with brood boxes, you can do it with your supers. You can take action early on in the year to reduce the risk of swarming without even pulling out a single frame and sticking a brood box underneath. Been waiting ages to do this video. That is the proof in the pudding. It works and it works very, very well.