Small Colony Trying to Swarm

Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Today I'm going to tell you about swarm cells, and in particular if you find swarm cells in a colony that you don't think should be swarming. So I come across this a fair amount. I mean, when you're doing your weekly inspections, you can kind of tell when a colony is going to swarm. They're jam-packed in the box, I mean, the reason that they swarm is to reproduce, so a bee colony will always kind of want to reproduce. It's the only way that their existence can be maintained, but as a beekeeper, you can stop that by giving them enough space. Yeah, so that's the prime way of stopping a colony swarming, but the bees don't understand that, and a lot of the time they swarm anyway, so there's other factors in play here. But in my view, a colony shouldn't swarm if it's got enough space, and it certainly shouldn't swarm if it's only over kind of like, say, 50% of the frames within the brood box. So in this video, I'm going to show you what to do if you find swarm cells when only 50% of the frames in the brood box are full of bees. There's a few things you need to look out for. If you go through your brood box and there's only kind of 40 or 50% full So four or five frames out of ten, and you find queen cells. Few things you need to consider first. So number one, find the queen. Is she there? Good. If the queen's there, that's really really helpful. The second one is, are the swarm cells capped? So if they're capped, chances are the queen may have left. If they're capped and the queen is there, something else may be at play. So if you find swarm cells on there uncapped. Chances are you're going to find the queen anyway. Next thing, look for eggs. So you want to see, is there a valid reason why they're trying to supersede this queen? So first thing I'll do is look for eggs. If I find eggs, great, that means that they're— in my view, there's no reason that they should be trying to swarm. And then the next thing you want to look for is that, is there any reason why they're trying to supersede the queen? So is there a nice brood pattern? Is she laying spotty, droney brood? She might not be correctly mated. Is there any damage to the queen? All of these things could result in them trying to supersede. So this also comes down to the number of cells you find. So if you find a single cell, highly likely that they're looking to supersede her. I would just let them get on with it if they're doing that. But there's a caveat to that, which is if you're working with packages— I've got this advice from kind of a really respected bee farmer— That they're not entirely used to the genetics that are being produced, so you need to give them a few cycles of brood in order to get them interested in the queen. So lots of different things to play. We'll have a look at the video and then we'll summarize it again at the end. So as you can see, it's, it's a small colony. It's not a colony that's looking at swarming because it needs to. It's not a colony that's looking at swarming because it's reached capacity in the box that it's in. It's— there's something else at play there. And like I say, these are packages, so you need to treat them slightly differently. And this is the method that I use if I find swarm cells in my packages and they look like this. So the first thing that I'm going to be looking for is, have the bees swarmed? And easy as that, we find the queen. So the queen is there. We know that the colony hasn't swarmed. That's the really important thing. And then we see swarm cells. So as you can see them here, we'll just move that piece of comb, and you can see that they are charged. You've got 1, 2, 3. So we just got 3 like that. Um, now because this is a package and they're still not 100% sure on the genetics, maybe, um, I'm gonna put this down as a mistake. Like, this colony clearly doesn't want to swarm. It doesn't need to swarm. I mean, a colony will swarm when it's reached capacity in the box that that it's in. This colony is on 4 frames out of 10. It's got absolutely loads of space. It's got enough brood, it's got enough stores. It shouldn't need to swarm. So the next check that I'm going to do once I found the queen is I want to see eggs. I want to check that this colony is a good colony. I want to check that the queen is a prolific layer, but more importantly than that, I just want to check that she can lay eggs. So I'll try and zoom in, but you can see— I can certainly see she's laid up this frame really, really well. The, uh, the pattern is nice, but more importantly than that, there are eggs. So within the last 3 days, she has been laying. Nothing wrong with that. Completely laid up with eggs. So what am I going to do about this colony? Well, it's quite simple. I'm just going to knock the queen cells back. So I'm going to go through it one by one. I'm going to make sure that I don't miss any, because even a little colony like this will swarm. So I'm shaking off the frames. Loads of space, nothing on that frame. Shaking off the frames. You can see again she's laid up that entire area there with eggs. Nothing on that frame. Like really, really densely populated eggs. Like all of that is brood in all stages. That will come up lovely. Nothing wrong with that at all. Same with this side, lots of eggs, lots of larvae, nice amount of stores, but they've got lots of space. Nothing wrong with that pattern at all. Maybe not the best pattern, but nothing wrong with it. So then all I'm going to do is I'm just going to take off the cells. Make sure you've not missed any. That frame's good to go. Lots of emerging brood on that one, no cells though. Final frame, just a bit of pollen, a little bit of nectar. So that's it for the video. It's a really simple one, and I'd say 9 times out of 10, Probably 99 times out of 100, that would be my advice. Take the queen cells down. The only time that I wouldn't do that is if if there were no eggs, if there was no queen, or if there was clearly some damage to the queen, something visible, maybe kind of like a broken leg or something like that. That that they will want to supersede her. They won't kind of put up with the damaged queen because it's not good for the colony. But when everything else looks good, so there's eggs, there's a healthy queen. There's nice brood, nice worker brood, and there's space for the colony to thrive. I think the best solution, take down those cells and monitor the colony. So you might go back in a week and they might have thrown up more cells. I'd probably go back and do the same thing again. I'd give them 2 goes at this, taking down those cells. If I went back for a 3rd week and they'd put more cells up, I wouldn't want to keep those genetics. That's not the kind of bee that I'm looking to I'm looking to breed and it's not the kind of bee that I'm looking to keep. They're more trouble than they're worth, so I would just let them get on with it. I'd let them either swarm or probably supersede. I would take the queen out, use her for something else, and let them just create their own queen. It becomes more trouble than it's worth to manage them. But as a one-off, if you find 4 or 5 frames of bees, that's what my advice would be. Take them down, make sure the queen's okay, Make sure she's not damaged. Make sure they've got enough space. Make sure there's eggs, and just monitor the colony. So that's it for today's video. Hope you've enjoyed it. Please hit the subscribe button. Please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.