If you start with a large double brood colony it might contain 60,000 bees. This figure is similar whether the colony is large or small.
When a colony swarms naturally about 75% of the adult bees leave with the old queen. This brood probably occupies most of the frames in the brood box.Īlso in the box are a very large number of adult bees, both workers and drones 3.Īnd there will probably be one, several or lots of unsealed queen cells 4 present as well 🙂 Why do anything? or What’s the worst thing that could happen? This box therefore contains brood in all stages (BIAS) – eggs, larvae and sealed brood. You apply a swarm control method that removes the old queen from the original brood box 2. Your hive is making preparations to swarm. It’s not going to depend upon the method of swarm control employed or – with some caveats to be discussed later – whether the colony has naturally swarmed. I’m also going to keep this as generic as possible.
I’ll briefly mention rescuing queenless colonies and stock improvement as it’s relevant. I am going to assume you start with one hive and you want to finish with one hive at the end of the process (i.e. I’m in the middle of my own swarm control at the moment and so intend to keep this relatively short and simple 1. Which one(s) should you leave? Assumptions How many of these queen cells should you leave in the hive? Queen cells – the good, the bad and the ugly
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