why swarm after a AS was done?

[burren]

I had this hive with a red june 2013 queen marked and clipped.. Was on 7frames bias and not great temperament.

on 23rd may - 2 x empty play cells.
on 30th may - few empty play cells, one charged - Artificial swarm performed. present queen/stores/pollen/bias/+few new foundation frames moved to the right and stores/bias/charged q cell/few new foundation frames staying on same spot to catch flying bees back,

3rd june- 4 days after AS performed-( hive with the old queen) bees calmer, eggs seen. q not seen.(she was hardly ever spotted before anyway)
11th june - eggs seen. q not seen.
18th june - v few eggs - less than 10. 1 empty play cell/ 1 play cell with egg. 4 sealed q cells.( 3 on top bars, one very low down on frame).

All other q cells were taken out. Best one left. temperament was a little better today.
Just as a note - Yesterday (17th) while moving some supers off one hive near to this hive. There seemed to be a lot of bee action in the air. I finished what I was doing with the supers and moved away and watched for 15 mins or so.
A great deal of bees were in the air above the apiary and flying around. I thought they had come from the hive I was just at, but after watching them fly around the area they collected on the front and bearded at the entrance to the hive that had the m+c red 2013 queen. They appeared to go back in. Was that them trying to swarm? Losing the clipped queen and going back in? Or could the 4 sealed q cells be supersedure ( although I have been told it is too early in the season to be that). Should I be doing a 6 day inspection to catch the bleeps out? Ideas please

 

[Tonyatcwfarm]

A/s seems strange to me
My take of a a/s is queen on frame she's found goes in new bb foundation only,on original site with supers over

 

[REDWOOD]

Yep , the old queen should be in a new BB on the original position and the QC should have been in the old box placed by the side a few meters away. Think what happens when bees swarm.

 

[burren]

Hi tonyatcwfarm
yes there are few variations on a AS. I was told that this was the simplest method!. Supers got moved with the old queen and "new" hive on old site with 1 c q cell got syrup the next day.

 

[oliver90owner]

Lets see.

No A/S performed. Moving the hive and splitting off the queen cell and flying bees, yes, but no artificial swarm.

Bees supercede their queen when necessary, not at any particular time. Failing or damaged queens do not arise by the calender.

Bees in the air could have been bees bees attempting to swarm, but whether the queen remained behind or was lost might be debatable.

All q cells were taken out. Best one left which? Can't be both.

Not sure what you intend to do on this 6 day inspection. I am guessing....

 

[masterBK]

If you do an AS with just one comb of brood and the rest foundation then some colonies will still swarm probably as they are congesting onto that one comb . If you had given them a few drawn combs flanking the transferred comb then less likely.

 

[Tonyatcwfarm]

If queen is clipped I'd be on my knees looking for her

 

[burren]

clipped, yes.

 

[ratcatcher]

forgive me if I sound stupid, as I've asked this before on a similar post, but surely when doing an artificial swarm, your trying to mimic what the bees would do, but rather than loose that swarm in a tree, you have it in a new hive.
correct yes or no?

so, in my eyes, an AS should be, queen and loads of bees into a new BB/nuc, with frames and foundation, that's it, no BIAS, surely adding that frame of brood, is what makes them swarm again

picked up yet another swarm today, they go into a nuc with frames and starter wax, we don't add brood to them, surely catching a swarm is no different from us doing an AS

 

[burren]

Thanks all for your replies. yes ratcatcher I agree. I followed someone elses AS method, which now seems to just be a way to make an increase ( not a great way at that! )or not as may have swarm from original hive I wasnt sure it made sense, but I followed it.......

 

[Fatbee]

If you do an AS with just one comb of brood and the rest foundation then some colonies will still swarm probably as they are congesting onto that one comb . If you had given them a few drawn combs flanking the transferred comb then less likely.

I do agree Ratcatcher but think the tricky aspects of A/S is that you're trying to mimic a situation and sometimes despite presence of Q/Cs the bees are not in full swarming mode so won't settle well. If they're at that stage then drawing out new foundation from the honey in their stomachs is child's play. Of course we never know for sure and have to do A/S but accept it's not 100% guaranteed.
I did the queen removal into a small nuc box on one hive this year rather than Pagden and it worked well - what was a 3 frame nuc is now a full colony and I have a nice new queen in the original colony. Anybody else do this method?

 

[jd101k2000]

Commiserations. I find that after something not going as expected (i.e. a b**** up) that the best thing to do is sit down with a cup of tea and work out what actually happened... so that next time I will do things differently.

At our BKA we have been taught another A/S method... different to all those mentioned. Followed it to the letter (or so I thought) but had missed out some vital component that didn't seem significant at the time.

Next year will be different!
(Otherwise I will be up to 40 colonies and the year after 180.)

 

[user 6228]

We did an A/S over 6-8 weeks ago ... on to new foundation into a conventional Poly hive . They built a complete new nest and were delivering honey. Then yesterday 7 Q cells at sides and middle and bottom of nest , with lots of room and BIAS in the rest of the nest.

Looked more like swarming than supercedure so another AS

There is no absolute certainty in anything

p.s a bit of a flow on here

 

[masterBK]

Ratcatcher: A Pagden type artificial swarm (with Heddon modification) as used and taught by many is very different from a natural swarm. In a natural swarm a high proportion of the bees are relatively young ie house bees whereas in an artifical swarm the vaste majority are older bees particularly foragers. Their wax glands and brood food glands have been long been "switched off" and although they will become active again this takes time and even then are never as good as when they were younger.

However a Taranov AS is more likely to mirror a natural swarm as the board leaves the younger bees clustering under it with the queen.

 

[Fatbee]

That's really interesting MasterBK. So, if a pagden swarm is done and you only have foundation available, would you recommend shaking some young bees in from the split colony to help that early drawing of wax in the original colony that will only contain the returning foragers?
A lot of literature describes a swarm as just containing foragers but what you describe does make sense.

 

[masterBK]

The comb I would select to put in the AS with the queen would be of emerging brood. I would also flank that comb with an empty drawn comb on each side of it. If the queen wasn't clipped I would also put excluder between BC and floor for a few days until the next inspection just in case.

Read Page 186 in Winston "Biology of the honeybee" & you will discover that up to 70% of the bees in a swarm are less than 10 days old. He lists the research behind this statement & also points out the logic behind it as well.

 

[ratcatcher]

I keep seeing quotes about putting excluder's under the queen to stop them leaving, not something I would ever do, but I suppose it's one way to say "this way works" rather than, it may not if the excluder was not present, maybe Im lucky in that all my bees have never read those books or papers

 

[masterBK]

Excluder under Queen in AS is not in any books I have read but something you learn from experience (and I have alot of that!) and is based on same logic as in the shook swarm ie stopping them absconding . I have seen them abscond a day after an AS several times over the years.