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Artificial Swarm Method

Artificial Swarm Method

Move the original Parent Colony hive with the brood, Bees Queen cell and queen about one metre to one side of it’s original location with the entrance facing the same direction.  

Prepare a new hive with frames of drawn comb or foundation, remove three frames leaving a space in the center (you will use these frames later) Then place the new empty spare hive now the Artificial swarm colony hive where the Parent Colony hive WAS. Check the Parent Colony hive ,take the marked frame with the Queen and brood in various stages, along with all the bees on it, ensure there are no queen cells and put it into the middle of the Artificial swarm colony hive , add one of the empty frames of fully-drawn foundation so that the queen has room to continue laying eggs immediately, rather than wait for the workers to draw out cells on the new foundation. Select an additional frame of brood in all stages of development and ample food stores and move this to the Artificial swarm colony hive, Remember this must NOT contain any more queen cells Remember the Artificial swarm colony hive is in the original place of the Parent Colony hive. So you are putting the old queen back in her previous location with food stores and combs of sealed brood and foraging /flying bees Ensure there are food reserves in the combs of the Parent Colony hive and it is never advisable to split existing brood with empty frames , close all the frames together and insert new frames removed from the Artificial swarm colony hive earlier at the outer edges to completely fill the brood box.  

Put the queen excluder, supers, crown board and roof back onto the Artificial swarm colony hive. This procedure has now produced an artificial swarm, giving you another colony and without the loss of honey production.   The Parent Colony hive will behave as if a swarm has just departed as it is now Queenless with nursery bees, Queen cells and some foraging bees, but the forager /flying bees will return to the Artificial swarm colony hive hive thinking it’s the Parent Colony hive. The nursery bees in the Parent Colony hive will act as normal and raise the queen cells until one is hatched or selected. The Artificial swarm colony hive will behave as if it has just swarmed and set up a new colony, consisting of the existing queen, all the flying bees, and plenty of honey to start comb-building and brood-rearing straight away. Do not feed straight away, wait a couple of days. Feeding sugar syrup immediately could cause robbing. For brood promotion use a 50/50 mix. Wait …………for 7 days After exactly seven days, usually one day before the new virgin queen is due to emerge from her cell, we need to move the parent colony hive to a new location.

  Move the Parent Colony hive one metre on the opposite side of the Artificial swarm colony hive. The forager /flying bees from this Parent Colony Hive will return to find their home missing and will go to the nearest hive, which will be the Artificial swarm colony hive and because the new queen has not hatched , they will not have an unfamiliar ‘Queen pheromone ‘ on them – this means that the guard bees at the entrance will freely allow them enter. This will help build up the loss of bees in the Artificial swarm colony hive and will encourage the growth of the colony . This procedure also reduces the risk of flying bees leaving the Parent Colony hive with a new queen, known as a cast swarm, because it leaves fewer flying bees in the Parent Colony hive The Parent Colony hive is a very weak because it has lost all the flying bees (their main defence force). For this reason do not feed them for 2 days, giving them enough time to organise their defences against honey-robbing. Check the Artificial swarm colony hive to see if the old queen has continued to lay and there are no queen cells. Wait at least 14 days and up to 21 days …then check the Parent Colony hive to see if the new queen has been mated and is laying. If the weather has been bad or there is no sign of eggs or larvae be prepared to re-unite the two hives. This can sometimes happen if the queen cannot fly to mate. Once you know the queen is laying in the Parent Colony hive you can either unite the two hives and remove the old queen or increase your number of colonies. Sometimes a virgin queen will swarm as soon as she has hatched, taking all the flying bees and as much honey as they can carry. Now this new queen will have few (if any) flying bees in her colony when she hatches, so this ‘cast’ swarm is almost certainly weak and vulnerable This is probably the most commonly used method of carrying out artificial swarm control. The rule of thumb is to master one method before trying others, do not try to attempt various methods because you could confuse yourself, or at worst even loose your bees

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