Hi Rich
To add to Gareth and Pauly replies, I can relate to your desire to take
action here. I know we all like to know what's going on and to reduce what
we see as a "problem" with our bees. A very natural human perspective.
My personal philosophy is that the key thing about low-intervention, more
natural, beekeeping is to try not to interfere with the bees' natural
behaviours and processes, or only as little as possible.
It is a great human trait to want to understand and "help", but we rarely
can really do so, mostly our actions result in us tending to "interfere"
and try to control. Our understanding is necessarily limited as we are not
bees and their 30 million years of evolution has produced lots of
epigenetics, mechanisms and behaviours tuned to things of which we are only
vaguely or not even aware.
For me, enabling a colony to thrive is really best done by by providing a
suitable environment then largely standing back, so they can pursue their
own needs, like making their own choice of which is the healthiest
best-placed princess to take over (not something we can determine).
So even if there are 12 queen cells left, following natural beekeeping
principles rather than conventional ones, I would not remove any. I've
often seen a prime followed by one or two casts, the greatest number of
swarms I've seen from one hive is 4, others may have seen more, but that
was notably unusual. The multiple queen cells are insurance, the bees do
not allow all princesses to successfully hatch and take a cast, they
control it and will determine the end point for themselves given the
balance of their competing drivers.
Of course, in taking this approach things can still go wrong, princesses
may not mate successfully, may prove defective down the line, or may be
lost, but the risk probability only goes up when we don't leave it to the
bees and try to "help" by limiting their choices
I always try to remind myself to relax and ask if my taking action is
really going to be helping anything or just disrupt. I find the drive to
"do something" while coming from a positive place is often more about
making me "feel" like I'm helping while really I'm not.
For me, being a low intervention beekeepers means trying to resist the
temptation of being all too human!
Lynne
On Sun, 22 May 2022, 09:57 Oxnatbees, <oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Rich,
some similarities with this:
yesterday we inspected one of the hives at Jane's to determine if
something was wrong with it. It is a swarm from one of her hives which has
been grumpy ever since she hived it 14 days before. Every comb - about 9,
not full size yet - was being used for hone / nectar / pollen but there was
a very noticeable absence of brood. In other words, not queen-right. Maybe
she disappeared on a mating flight.
Previous to that, the hive it came from had tried to swarm several times
but gone back in to the hive. This is characteristic of a colony that is
trying to swarm, but the queen can't fly. They eventually swarmed after a
few days, maybe with a princess, who has now died. The colony should be
savable by merging with another swarm or colony, or possibly by giving it
combs of brood from another colony (though Gareth has previously said that
needs to be repeated a few times and just weakens the donor colony).
Generally speaking you are opening your hives more than I would, but I
opened mine a fair bit in my first 2 years and the upside was, it taught me
a lot. And as you have framed hives it is less disruptive than opening
TBHs. But, you will probably find their temper is more relaxed if you open
them less.
I think most beekeepers don't remove ALL extra queen cells because there
is a reasonable chance (15%) that a given princess will not be successful
on her mating flight, so best to leave 1 or 2 spare heirs in the hive if
you do decide to remove or kill some.
If you catch a swarm which is just 3 tennis balls in size, that's too
small to be viable - very high risk of dying after a few months - merge it
into another colony, ideally the one it came from. Luckily your small one
returned to the hive.
Paul
On Sat, 21 May 2022 at 23:19, rich tetlow <rich.tet@xxxxxxx> wrote:
just wondering if anyone can suggest a reason for a recent behaviour of
one of my hives. i've already had one lot swarm out, missed the prime swarm
then had 2 biggish casts, which i caught. a few days ago the next biggest
hive issued a swarm, i'd say about football size. they sat in a tree for
about an hour, then just as i was going to get them picked themselves up &
disappeared into the distance. so quite sprightly, & purposeful, given the
last few have emerged & then hung around for a day checking out my bait
hives. to my shame, i don't actually know if this was a prime swarm, or if
i missed that & it was a very big cast. i suspect the latter because i
immediately looked through the hive, finding about a dozen sealed queen
cells, one in the act of hatching & another with a hole in the side- ie
they'd clearly been there for a bit, & one but not all had been killed,
presumably by another queen. although we didn't see any hatched queen cells.
anyway, i moved all the frames with queen cells on except one, along with
their bees, into a new brood box. not sure if this is standard practice,
but i've about had enough of casts this year & figured the foragers would
mostly go home, the young bees would stay & rear the princesses & other
brood, & the new colony wouldn't have anywhere near enough bees to swarm so
the princesses would have to sort it out amongst themselves.
the new colony, next to the first, has stayed very quiet, the old one
carried on as before, then a few days later they swarmed again. got a front
seat view because i was working in the greenhouse right next to them, it
was only a little swarm- maybe 3 tennis balls' worth- & they went & sat on
a post about 20 yards away, on top of which i then put a cardboard box.
they immediately started walking up into it, so i went away for half an
hour, but when i came back the weight of bees had dislodged the box & there
was a lot of flying about again. i wedged it back a bit more firmly,
noticing in the process that they'd secreted a lot of wax scales in their
brief stay on the post, & tried again. when i got back this time the box
was empty, & my observation in the interim was, they'd all gone back to the
hive, with a lot trying to rejoin the new brood box initially, then by the
end of the day everyone back in the old hive.
slightly reluctantly i disturbed them again the next day, thinking maybe
there was a queen or princess we'd missed, & expecting the queen cell to be
either hatched or torn down, but no, we had a good thorough look this time
& could find no queen, or princess, & the cell still intact. we did,
embarrassingly, find another one we'd missed previously, which i moved
across to the new box with the rest.
so, this is the second time this year i've had a swarm come out, sit for
a bit then go back in. first time i thought their queen had suffered some
accident, but i thought that was a bit tenuous then, & i refuse to believe
its happened twice. i wonder if they sometimes follow a princess out when
shes off on a mating flight? it occurs to me as well that princesses must
surely do a bit of hanging around outside before they go off or they'd be
very hard put to find their way back...
anyway, seems like all i can do with this hive currently is leave it
alone. if they swarm they swarm, & if they don't have a laying queen in a
month or so i'll join them to the new colony, assuming one of their queens
makes it. but the trouble with being all hands off is, i don't know whats
actually happened & am basically guessing, which is why i wondered if
anyone else could shed any light?
