In this tutorial Laurence Edwards explains how he performed a shook swarm across his entire apiary as a precautionary disease‑control and hive‑revitalisation technique. He outlines the step‑by‑step process – removing the queen, shaking all bees onto new equipment (Payne’s poly boxes with 14 × 12 plastic/molded frames and feeders), returning the queen, and withholding feed for at least three days to allow the bees to purge any pathogens. Edwards notes that while no disease was present, the method serves to eradicate chalkbrood, sacbrood, EFB and other viruses, and provides a vigor boost. He documents the equipment used, the slower draw‑out rate of plastic frames compared with wooden frames, and the ease of spotting eggs and queen activity on these frames. The video showcases an F1 Buckfast queen, highlights its commercial availability, and discusses observations of brood development, frame drawing, and colony strength over time. Edwards also references his clean NBU inspection, DASH certification, and cautions that shook swarming should not be applied indiscriminately, but can reduce disease load, give a limited varroa break, and aid colonies with asymptomatic EFB. He plans to follow the colonies’ progress through the season to assess honey production potential.
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About 10 days ago, I shook swarmed this entire apiary. Don't worry, I'm going to do a full video on a shook swarm showing you how to do it, but it is effectively taking the queen out, shaking all the bees onto new kit, new foundation, new frames, putting the queen back in, not feeding them for a minimum of 3 days, trying to get away without feeding them at all, and then you eradicate any disease that is present within the frames. That can be chalkbrood, sacbrood, EFB, any of those diseases or viruses. And it does seem to really help the vigor of the bees as well and gives them a massive boost. Okay, you've taken away all their brood, so you're setting them back quite a bit as well. But hopefully you'll see with this colony here over the next few episodes in this series, the bees can bounce back from a shook swarm really, really well. So before we jump in, I shook swarmed all of these colonies and they were big, strong colonies into Payne's poly boxes on a 14 by 12 configuration using plastic frames and feeders, molded frames. I've not fed any of these colonies because the flow here is good, but you do need to wait a minimum of 3 days so the bees can purge their stomachs and they're not bringing anything along with them from the old equipment. Now, it definitely needs to be said at this point as well, there was no disease in this apiary. I'm doing this as a precautionary measure across all of my apiaries and trying to do maybe 2 or 3 apiaries a season just to eradicate any risk. I'll double down, there was definitely no disease, and you can see NBU came around, inspected all of my colonies this year, gave me a clean bill of health with no disease whatsoever. And also I passed my DASH training, so now I'm a fully qualified DASH, whatever it is. Let's get inside, see how the bees are getting on. So it might look empty from there, but believe me, it's not. The bees are really working hard on those 14 by 12 frames. We're going to get inside now, take a closer look, but see if you can look down the gaps. I know there's a bit of glare. But that is 6 14x12 frames full to the brim with bees. Not bubbling over because all they want to do is get those frames drawn out. I can't wait to get inside this colony and see how they're doing. So you can see the bees are drawing them out really nicely, starting off quite slowly with the plastic frames. I've done some shook swarms recently onto wooden frames with wax foundation, and basically after a day they were fully drawn out. So these are much slower to get going, but they're drawing them out very nicely, which is really important. So another nice frame there. They're starting to draw it out. You can see they're drawing it out on the other side as well. Still not found any eggs in this one, which is a slight concern. Really would like to identify the queen and see some eggs being laid. Hey, I needn't have worried. Both sides of this frame here are full to the brim with eggs. And see if you can spot that queen as well. She is a beauty. F1 Buckfast mated queen. This is one of the queens that we sell, and you can see what a nice calm colony this is. Little close-up of the queen there because she really is a very good-looking queen. Maybe we'll see her lay an egg, or maybe she'll get a little bit camera shy, but she is very good-looking. I'll shake off this frame in a little bit as well. I'll put the queen back in there and I will shake it off and I'll show you all the eggs that they're laying. But she is a very nice, good-looking F1 Buckfast queen. You can buy them on our website, blackmountainhoney.co.uk. Right, so I've just picked up that queen and I'm just going to pop her back into the hive there. Right, she's into the hive now, and I'm just going to shake off this frame so I can show you the eggs. So I'm not sure if you can see it from that camera. I will do another camera angle as well, but I can see on the back here tons and tons of eggs, loads of royal jelly, single eggs into each and every cell. Very well-mated queen. I'll definitely come back and do an update on this colony at some point as well. So there we go, hopefully you can see the eggs on that as well. I know there are a few issues with these frames and feeders frames. One, I don't like the fact they slide around. 2, they do take a lot longer to get drawn out. And 3, yep, there's a little bit of an issue in case you get disease. But here is one of the real massive benefits, is that if you struggle to see eggs, you really shouldn't struggle to see eggs in these frames and feeders frames. Very, very easy to see, and I'm very happy with how the bees are drawing that out. There we go, shook swarms. I remember looking back a few years ago and it was really fashionable every single apiary you do a shook swarm at the beginning of the season. And I used to look at it and just think, no, what are you doing? That's really bad teaching. And as I've developed as a beekeeper, I'm not saying you should shook swarm your colonies and your apiaries every single year, but I can really see the benefits of doing it. You're reducing the disease chance, the disease loading on that colony. You're giving them a break from varroa, albeit a limited break. But if you do have asymptomatic EFB, which a lot of people might not know that they actually have, doing something like this can really help control that EFB. I'm going to show you these colonies as they build back up because you can see this is like a 5 or 6 frame nuc of bees at the moment, really small colony. Let's see how big we can get these over the course of the season and see if we can even recover to get a decent honey crop. I had a couple of supers spring crop from this colony here. They've knocked back down to a 6-frame nuc now. I'll upgrade it to a 10-frame hive and then we'll see how well we do throughout the summer. Just to be clear, I'm not advocating everybody goes out and shook swarms every single colony. I'm just showing you what the benefits of a shook swarm can be.
