Episode 64: Questions and Answers May 2019

This week is my Questions and Answers week, for those of you listening for the first time, it’s where supporters from my Patreon page can post questions to me that they have maybe encountered and I’ll do my best to give an answer. If you’re listening via Patreon, my thanks for your continued support and for those of you listening to the later release of the podcast, don’t miss out on the latest podcast by simply signing up on my dedicate web page.
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Well, it’s been an eventful week! I collected more swarms and promptly lost the biggest one, I posted a picture of it on Twitter and Instagram, and someone commented I would need a triple nuc to fit it all in, well, I only had a single nuc box  on board the truck so they went into that overnight and when I returned the following morning they had decided they didn’t like the new location and had disappeared. What was really sad was there was just one single drone left behind wandering around on the floor of the nuc trying to work out where the party had disappeared to. It reminded me of my teenage years, but that’s another story entirely that isn’t for this podcast!

Moving on to a slightly different topic it’s been a tricky week for inspecting, cooler temperatures again and some quite rainy days, interestingly, when I have been out to check on the bees, and I have to say I’ve not looked in many colonies this week, I’ve seen quite a few queen cells torn down. I suspect this is probably down to the weather and the bees not wanting to put effort and resources into queen cells during the colder weather. But, how do they know what the long range forecast is going to be? It’s not like they have the internet or access to the met office. Maybe it’s down to air pressure or something, I really don’t know. To take my mind off such complex thoughts I’ve just spent an hour or so at the workshop making up some clearer boards with Pete, another job done so at least the time isn’t wasted.

Lets get started with this weeks burning issues, first up is Paul Andrews who asks

“Hi Stewart,

How do you get the bees to read the books! This year has been manic, all going well until 3 weeks ago when I saw swarm preparations. I had given space and already split 2 hives, I moved the best queen cells into new nucs along with brood and left the queen behind in brood box. Phew, all done, shut up and did same in the rest of the hives. The next week all again! I cut cells out placed in mating nucs I had just bought after setting them up with bees. Then on Sunday Oh no, queens gone and no eggs, set up boxes with the best remaining cells and shut up. All hives had space in brood and in supers and queen, only a year to 2 old. Any ideas? Paul

Hi Paul,

Your tale of swarming colonies is not a solitary incident and I’m sure many beekeepers will have experienced exactly the same issues. I like that you took action and I’m sure you’ll get some really nice queens from the splits that you’ve made so not all is lost.

You questions seems to be asking having split the colony and reduced it’s size why did the queen still swarm?

I think the one thing that you don’t mention and I’m making an educated guess here, is that you left the queen in the original hive with the flying bees and some brood and  that I believe is the problem.

By leaving the queen with the flying bees and brood, albeit a reduced amount, you’re still giving them a chance to swarm. I would suggest if it happens again, removing the queen and leaving a single queen cell with the flying bees would be a more controlled way of splitting them. Reduce the number of queen cells to just one and the flying bees can’t swarm. You can still split nucs from the colony with queen cells if you’re looking to increase or reproduce queens but I would remove the queen and let her continue in a nuc building u