Why did this one swarm ?

[Bevbee]

I did a shook swarm an a strong colony 30/3. I checked 7/4 and we had eggs and larvae ( earliest it could emerge 21/4 ). On 7/5 I had a swarm.
I inspected yesterday and there was a single QC ( now empty) no egg/larvae and I did not see a queen.

My question is why did they swarm ? They had plenty of space (they have 2 frames of foundation still to draw) the colony wasn't particularly swarmy last year. At the other end of the apiary , I have a hive that is choc full (it was too small for a shook swarm earlier in the year), but there the old queen is, struggling to find a spare cell to lay in and no sign of a QC. It doesn't seem to make sense.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Why abuse your bees by shook swarming them all the time?

 

[Finman]

Impossible to say what had happened in the hive.

Perhaps they were afraid that you come to shake them again.

 

[Bevbee]

Why abuse your bees by shook swarming them all the time?

Tried it for the first time this year. One of the experienced guys at the local beekeeping association swears by it and as the BBKA magazine article writer also suggested it, I thought I would try it out with two of my hives.
I am pretty convinced that they are disease free and, until they swarmed, seemed to be doing really well. Do you know if shook swarming could be the reason they swarmed?

 

[Millet]

Tried it for the first time this year. One of the experienced guys at the local beekeeping association swears by it and as the BBKA magazine article writer also suggested it, I thought I would try it out with two of my hives.
I am pretty convinced that they are disease free and, until they swarmed, seemed to be doing really well. Do you know if shook swarming could be the reason they swarmed?

They obviously don't like there home if they keep getting evicted everytime there landlady is told to do the pointless wrong thing,,

 

[Anduril]

The inexperienced struggle to find virgin queens, their abdomen is triangular in shape. Although you say there is plenty of room, they will swarm if sugar syrup bound, or could be a starvation swarm not enough stores.

 

[Bevbee]

They obviously don't like there home if they keep getting evicted everytime there landlady is told to do the pointless wrong thing,,

Yes that is probably it. Although wouldn't this theory make more sense if they had all left immediately ? They took the time to lay four/five frames of brood, they had plenty of food. Why would their dislike of a shook swarm affect them five weeks later ? Why would they bother making a QC at all. If they disliked the landlady so much why not simply buzz off?

 

[Bevbee]

The inexperienced struggle to find virgin queens, their abdomen is triangular in shape. Although you say there is plenty of room, they will swarm if sugar syrup bound, or could be a starvation swarm not enough stores.

Ahhh

This makes total sense to me!
I can accept that I missed the virgin queen.
I did feed sugar syrup and they did take loads. The weather was appalling here in April ( Easter excepted) and getting out and about was a problem for all hive inhabitants so they would not have found much of anything else. It is also possible that I stopped feeding too early.
Thank you so much, much appreciated.

 

[Millet]

Yes that is probably it. Although wouldn't this theory make more sense if they had all left immediately ? They took the time to lay four/five frames of brood, they had plenty of food. Why would their dislike of a shook swarm affect them five weeks later ? Why would they bother making a QC at all. If they disliked the landlady so much why not simply buzz off?

It was a tongue in cheek post regarding the brutal process of shook swarming a colony for no reason other than to satisfy someone set in there ways..

After further reading i see you may have missed a virgin Queen..hard to spot but not impossible..it is all about the movement and those long brown back legs..the legs give the game away all day long for me but look closely for a more frantic different clumsy movement compared to the workers..also look for nothing else just the Queen..you will see her at some point..now a tiny drone laying Queen smaller than a worker is a different ball game..

 

[Beefriendly]

Tried it for the first time this year. One of the experienced guys at the local beekeeping association swears by it and as the BBKA magazine article writer also suggested it, I thought I would try it out with two of my hives.
I am pretty convinced that they are disease free and, until they swarmed, seemed to be doing really well. Do you know if shook swarming could be the reason they swarmed?

As your current experience should now be telling you neither your experienced guys nor the writer of the BBKA article had a scoobies.
A shook swarm is probably the worst thing you can do a hive of healthy bees. Not even any sound logic to it....apart from it has become trendy amongst those who don't wish to harvest any honey.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Impossible to say what had happened in the hive.

Perhaps they were afraid that you come to shake them again.

As your current experience should now be telling you neither your experienced guys nor the writer of the BBKA article had a scoobies.
A shook swarm is probably the worst thing you can do a hive of healthy bees. Not even any sound logic to it....apart from it has become trendy amongst those who don't wish to harvest any honey.

another pointless/reckless fad propagated by the usual crowd at the BBKA
mention shook swarm to any bee farmer and they will look at you with pity and scoff at such a ludicrous idea

 

[mjt68]

I've increasingly come to believe that the BBKA approach seeks only to maximise the amount of times you open the hive and the number of different manipulations you do.

I did my first shook swarm last week to get rid of the tbh and get the bees on proper frames. It's a brutal thing to do and such a waste but I couldn't see any other way. Mind you, they've bounced back and are really going for it now. This is mid season though, not late March like OP. No feeding but honey from tbh going into feeders once osr gone, going to try round sections.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Of course they're going for it -someone has trashed their home and they're valiantly trying to rebuild it and catch up on the brooding they've lost.

Imagine some clown doing that every spring for no apparent reason?

 

[mjt68]

Imagine some clown doing that every spring for no apparent reason?

Just a bad idea, every way you think about it. Such a waste of brood, wax, pollen and honey, not to mention time.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Just a bad idea, every way you think about it. Such a waste of brood, wax, pollen and honey, not to mention time.

And they wonder why queens aren't lasting as long as they used to

It's laughable - you hear them discussing at the spring convention - bemoaning the fact that queens don't mate as well as they used to....then boast about how much drone brood they culled the last year.
Then they complain about queens running out of steam much quicker than they used to..... and they spend their time pushing the queen into laying overdrive to make up for lost brood.