🔵Swarm Season Hive Management.

hi it's cayman reynolds and it is a gorgeous spring day april's fixing to be here the bees are bringing in all kinds of pollens the dead nettle and henbit are just about done the dandelions are just about done the bees are focusing on a different type of tree that's related to maple which is called box elder and whoo that bee doesn't like me anyways we're gonna get into this bee yard and we're gonna show you what it's like so we're going through this yard it's a little windy today but you know every colony's got different needs this one over here it had almost all of its brood on the right hand side from the entrance and there was just about four frames of brood here and then below there's about three frames of brood so it looked really nice but they really weren't doing a good job about moving over definitely a little bit smaller than what i'd like to see this time of the year but so we kind of rearranged put all the brood down below pretty much almost all the empty stuff above and this one's going to be in good shape has plenty of room so it's not going to swarm on us and now i'm checking this one right here and it looks like it's real close to wanting to swarm so that's why i wanted to show it to you and we just we initially go through we're just cracking right here and i'm feeling lots of weight i'm seeing lots of bees well there's not as many now that i've smoked them that you can see but check this out so we have a lot of queen cups right here quite a few and i'm just seeing brood out to here i'm seeing capped brood over into here that is a lot of brood and i'm looking down here and i'm seeing brood frame brood frame brood frame and so they're fixing to outgrow this box but i'm also seeing some empty combs over here so this is where a rotation would really come in handy might also pull a frame of brood from this colony the honey flow here isn't going to start for still about 10 to 14 days so you know i'd rather again keep them from swarming than anything i'm looking at themselves and thankfully they're dry but i mean that could literally change in just a few days i go ahead and kind of just smash them anyways just to be on the safe side it's a whole lot faster than checking them you know and then we're going to kind of pull a couple of these frames out and just see what's going on see if we can pull the frame of root or so so first of all i'm going to pull this right on here now typically this isn't a spot but it is today and we're just going to open up both of these sides nice healthy population i'm seeing drones in here we've stopped feeding the pollen patties a few weeks ago the bees are bringing in so much diverse pollens so these two frames are they've got a little bit of honey not a whole lot to them so i'm going to sit them over here this one isn't completely drawn out let's see what we have we have a little bit of brood mostly drawn at the bottom b bread drones and same thing over here so that one can be shifted around as well now one thing if you're going to get real particular about replacing brood i would rather have the if you see any brood that's emerging just go ahead and stick it in the top because it's going to come on out and we're trying to clear space so i'm seeing eggs down in here oh yeah just eggs eggs eggs so she's doing a good job of rotating between the boxes but i want to keep this that kind of stuff down below because it's going to take a long time for that to develop all the way and then emerge and clear room for the queen again so preferably i want all that kind of stuff in the bottom yeah there's just larvae and eggs down in here um oh nice i'm sure the lion share the broods up above it's pretty normal yeah larvae down in here starting to cap and more of the same so we're just going to keep that down in here let's start uh check it over here and see what we have 10 frames up in here so i start the edge now there's some that are a little bit smaller than this colony not too far but you know they don't really need quite as much work you know i could just rotate the boxes this good frame of food right there that's that's excellent always good to stick those types of frames towards the edge where they like to have them anyways okay so eggs lots of eggs in there very good if we spot the queen we're going to drop her down below those eggs over here again we want those eggs down below and young larvae because we're trying to clear room for the queen if we're going to take this time to do it might as well and it's going to take longer for her to be able to lay in those cells again got capped brood over in here nice frame of capped brood i'm seeing a lot of check this out laurel see down in there all that larvae shadow might be getting in the way but anyways so that means they're just capping these so they're not going to be emerging anytime soon sorry about the wind boy it's really gusting now bee works still got to be done it's going to rain tomorrow of bee bread capped brood here might pull one of those all right lots of bee bread again and capped brood this is all emerging stuff right here older so we're going to leave that here in the top box okay wow okay more emerging stuff but she's laying it back up b brad kind of mixed age on this frames mixed age on this frame this is a nice colony we keep it together and the weather cooperates it's going to make several supers of honey this is emerging lots of bees emerging from this one right here he's gonna keep that one up top haven't been in this bee yard for well a whole bee yard inspection for about two weeks excuse me wow goodness gracious girl more oh there she is right there there she is right there and you can just see her right here and then over in here look at all these fuzzy bees look at that be emerging right there as fast as they are clearing room she's coming back and laying it up like i've said before the queens can detect the pheromones of emerging newbies and she knows that's a good spot maybe she doesn't know but something in her little brain tells her that there's room for her to lay over there and so she goes for it that is excellent so we would definitely want to take this queen and place her in the bottom box that way she's going to lay up that space down below and she'll work her way back up again all right there she goes right down there just grabbed her by her wings dropped her on down she'll work her way back up before too long maybe unnecessary but i like to do it all right so actually that frame that we the nice thing is now we can pull brood and don't have to worry about the queen being on any of this so i'm actually going to pull this frame we're going to find a worthy colony and give them this frame and they won't have to do any work i mean goodness this these bees will probably be emerged out of here within the next 24 hours or so so let's just uh put this back again obviously we'll have to give them a frame of drawn comb and we are going to focus on this box over here first all righty then that's one we want let's see what we've got over in here and they've got some capped honey over here there's a little bit of a flow coming in yeah i mean look at all this brood oh my goodness we definitely need to take some bees from this we could take two from here i'm gonna come back and uh goodness gracious kills me just breaks my heart we're gonna take a little bit more away from this colony oh my goodness this frame's got some capped brood and a lot of bee bread so it's not taking as much well i misspoke yet again laurel can always edit these little snippets out and make it look like i know what i'm talking about every time but where's the fun in that all right another great frame of capped brood i mean these queens we really need to think about stop raising our own and buying elsewhere okay so this one is capped brood and eggs and larvae i think i'm going to swipe this one it's got a good bit of capped brood mix stage on this one so she's laid up a lot of the in between spaces between the b bread and the calf brood that's what we'll go for so over here you stay right there i'll be right back so i've got these two really old combs this one i'm almost positive was a frame that i put together over 15 years ago i'm gonna use it for a swarm trap because it's just getting old and i'm just going to find a frame or two over here goodness ah yeah this box comes from the good old days where i was doing some foundationless beekeeping oh my goodness wavy combs it was an adventure i remember this one i remember this frame when it was brand new it had that weave and they were going in between like that boy that's been a that's been several years they'll use this comb though i'm definitely going to stick these up in the top so as the queen naturally moves up she is going to wear those out like she's been doing everything else but i don't want to split the brood up so i'm seeing a frame of food over here and i'm going to stick this against that frame it's not always about giving her immediate laying room sometimes it's about giving them a space to put resources so they're not bogging down the middle combs and that kind of stuff and i definitely we're getting some nights coming up that's going to get below freezing just a little bit so i definitely don't want to be splitting up frames of brood and risking this gorgeous work that she's done so we're just going to take this frame stick it here towards the outside i'm taking those two and that one's got a little bit of larvae and whatnot you know i'm gonna stick this one no yeah yes it does larvae will stick that down in there this one's just food so we're definitely going to stick that one here and this one's not even drawn all the way out on this side so all right 10 down there what did i do laurel well there might have been nine and only one of these boxes i went back to 10 or i take a frame feeder i don't know what i did either way we'll give them this comb right here and they can have this one instead all right queen's down below we got a couple frames of brood and we're going to put this one together so now this should really take any thought of maybe starting to swarm right on out of there it's going to really help a little colony out and you know we might lose a little bit of honey production for this colony but you know there's more important things than just honey production to me anyways all right we'll show you more stuff here in just a little bit well this is what we're here for there's swarm cells in this hive they're not capped yet so we caught it just in time gauging from my experience raising queen cells i'm going to say that well i'm going to let you look at this cell first you can see how drawn that queen cup you know this this is like a queen cup right here a little bit more developed this is like an average looking queen cup that's somewhat fresh that one is dry so they're not into full gear obviously if they were really into full swarm drive there would be on a hive this size probably about 10 cells give or take but this one right here is probably around day three or something like that or working on it and you got this one over here and you can see how it's a little extended they've added wax to it and then check up and here look at all of this royal jelly and you can eat that stuff it's very good for you wow look at all that jelly right there the bees will consume this and eat it and use it to feed larvae with so we'll just put this down in here but we don't want this hive to swarm so what are we going to do about it all right so that's why we're here hey buddy yellow drone on me all right you got to chill out over here i got work to do same thing all right one thing i'm going to do first i know that there's form cells up here this looks pretty bare down here as far as i'm seeing a couple frames of brood out maybe four frames with brood on it so it looks like there's some space this is not like crazy swarm drive but those were capped and this height was plugged i'd say we have to do a heavy split what we're gonna do is just evaluate what we have down here we're at to go through those frames too and make sure that we don't have any swarm cells we miss one they're gonna hit the trees all right so we're just going to come up down in here and i'm pretty confident yeah very low impulse to swarm right now they just run out of room up top probably should have had a reversal or a frame of brood or two pulled i'm a little bit behind on one or two yards so um you know what i'm just going to pull this out because it's going to go on top that's an old box right there goodness that one's been around that might been in the first batch i ever bought from kelly's and we're gonna drop this down now my goal right now is to get down in there and make sure i don't miss any cell then we're going to pull some brood from this hive probably a shake of bees we're going to make them feel like they've had a little bit of a swarm happen you know they're not thinking oh we've already swarmed they're just thinking you know that whatever reason we're causing that their crowded behavior queen running out of room delay we've got to fix all of those things and it's still salvageable so she can't lay in this food every kind stick this to the side wow no wonder queen's getting busy so we may pull this frame i'd like to find the queen just so we don't have to worry about her lots of good looking drones there beautiful beautiful pattern this off the side i'm also looking for queen cups because you can't just look at the bottom well queen cells sometimes they'll have them up in here and they'll draw them out too so you have to make sure you get every single one whether it's up in here or whether it's down here 99 of them typically are down in here at least 90 percent that's a gorgeous frame lots of food she's just run out of room to lay so checking um now if there's too many bees and you can't see good i can see all this really well then you can shake the bees off so you can see better so yeah it looks like we've got everything on this frame i really like this one right here probably going to swipe this one from the hive man we're i'm gonna do with all this brood keep pulling brood from these colonies last time i was over here i pulled a ton of brood all right so this one is mostly just eggs eggs eggs and when the queen stops laying when they're at that point where she stopped laying that's that's usually when it's hard to salvage the situation unless you can catch the queen herself but she's still laying right away so we're going to leave this frame in here i want to check around this funky cone because sometimes it'll be on the inside hanging down in there so i'm going to take this and shake those bees down in there now i got a clear view and you may not have seen these right here but look at all these cups we got a dry cup and two started cups right here nice royal jelly right there and this one is dry so again not too heavy of an impulse hey buddy sorry i woke you up a little too early right there come on out put you back in there all right so we're good on this one now we could just start shaking them off that'd be the easiest way to find if the colonies on the ground especially you're going to shake and they'll run right in it's something soft it won't hurt the queens too bad you just it's better not to shake the queens if you can avoid that though you definitely don't want to damage a queen or have something happen to her but i'm just gonna lightly shake that anyways most of time i'd say she just falls on another bee if she was on this frame so not seeing any queen cups here that amount to anything very low swarm impulse on this colony but again left unchecked we come back in a few weeks and this hive's already swarmed for sure all right so looking for that queen watch me miss her a lot of times when i really need to find her i miss her on the first go-around and then it's the uh it's when i don't need to find him i'm like oh there's a queen every time just how things work in life all right so i'm not seeing any queen cups over here excellent gorgeous colony and you know it's not even the biggest colony in the yard they just uh some colonies want to swarm a little earlier this one would get a instant ant off the breeding program it's just uh we don't want colonies that swarm pretty early wow this one is attached to the next frame over with some brood i'm going to pull them out together let's see here see that queens on this frame i try to get them apart yeah there's that queen cell right here that one might be a little further along than i think yep look at all that royal jelly larvae right there yeah that's past day two all right let's see if i can get this frame apart trying to check and see if the queen's on the outside of this first they've tied up all this drone brood in here wonderful let me know if you see the queen laurel i know you will i'm just going to set this down for a second we got to make sure we get all these cells right here so we're just going to shake those down and lots of grown brood and bees down in here i'm going to get rid of this drone brood right here that was the problem shake this a little more now that i know the queens and i want to shake it real hard i hate doing that to those drones but every time that you have frames like that you end up crushing bees between them and you don't want to crush the queen or anything it's all this right in here they'll probably tie it back together but sometimes they won't big old drone goodness yep there's some see these cups right here just very little development on those but if you miss them royal jelly royal jelly gotta make sure you get all those one up here that one doesn't have anything in it one there we are just going to take that just double check all right best not to let it get to this stage you don't have to do anything about it but i'd be lying to say if we didn't have to do this from time to time this colony swarms it's going to be a lot of bees hitting the tree probably a four or five pound cluster on the small side so i'm seeing food stuffs here a nice red pollen basket right there from the dead nettle oh goodness just disappeared on me food all right we're just gonna check this one real quick it should be more food but you never can be too thorough yeah this one's just full of honey just full of honey all right we're gonna check this top box here in a second and we'll see in a bit so we're looking for the queen i'm going to take this frame from them takes uh take a shaker of bees or so and just trying to find that gal frame of food we haven't even looked in this top box yet so we're going to do that here in one second this has been really disruptive to this colony but they really have a better chance of surviving in our hives with us doing a split than for them to swarm out there's plenty trust me we missed some swarms so there will there nature will get its share all right we are just going to go to the heart of the problem i doubt there are cells down in here we look down below but you just never know sometimes they'll build up in here all this bird comb and you can see how there is um like a drone cell right there sometimes they'll just build off of that have a queen cup it'll be like a swarm cell just at the top of the frame so these can do interesting things like that from time to time so you definitely don't want to again miss that cell queen might be down here you know we did yeah so like right here seeing some larvae and there's this cell right here something like this i don't think it's developed but i'm just going to go ahead and remove it i don't like that it's kind of in the way you can roll bees with it as you're pulling the frame up just get rid of it seeing some more larvae and what not down in here but no queen so we're going to stick that over here wow okay seeing some capped brood on this one and another one of those funky cells so i'm seeing a mixture of bee bread catch brood very nice capped brood over here very nice capped root over here might take this frame as well and before we let's let's say we don't find the queen and she's in that box over there and we missed her which happens from time to time laurel and i will both double check those frames back there before we give them to another colony another frame of grape brood at least on this side i'm not seeing any well i just said i wasn't seeing any queen cells but look at this one right here they've got a few up in here and i am excuse me b let's just yank this whole thing off of here come on and yeah these are all dry but they'll use them that bee's getting a little aggravated at my invasive behavior all right so i'm not seeing any queen cups on the bottom of that drone bruh we'll leave that in there just double checking for that queen one more time liking what i'm seeing out of this colony though it's got to keep them together in a colony like this if they won't swarm and make a you know if it's a good year we'll make two deep boxes of honey if it's a nice year at least one deep box of honey if it's just okay not seeing her on this end no queen cups another frame with a good bit of brood we should should have just got him space a little bit sooner or pulled him back goodness just more more brood we're definitely pulling two frames from this one no question still not seeing the queen we're gonna there still is more room in this box than there was the other one there's less food but we'll drop two drawn combs in here that are empty and so she'll have more room reduce the population eliminate those cells and we'll come back and check them in a week but i'm pretty confident that that'll knock them back and they'll get out of that swarm mode not seeing the queen on this frame not seeing any cups another great frame of larvae though good ah okay so old looking comb right here no brood but there is a pretty big cell on the bottom wow there's okay i said no brood there's eggs on this side jeez so we need to check this out right here right down here in the crevice between these two drone combs there's this and it could be nothing oh ho it is something man there is royal jelly all in that that's all would have taken got a little lazy and said you know what probably nothing over here most times i don't think there would be this queen's going all over the place now if i could just see the gal she must be too busy and he probably is back in a cell laying an egg she's just working all the time well this is the last frame we're not going to get lazy at this point and i am seeing nothing but a little bit of nectar and pollen and it's a completely dry on that side so we're actually going to probably move that in okay so what i've got that i'm going to be pulling out of this hive is i've got this frame that's b bread it's uh we've got a little calf brood it's got some larvae down in there i'm going to take the adhering bees we'll double check the queen's not on here it's got a lot of capped brood on this side so that's going to take some good space and we'll look put in its place some drawn comb that's why i tell you all you don't listen to some of these guys to tell you after two or three years you gotta throw all that drawn comb away if you get to a point where you have excess if you want to do that that's great but if you're trying to get somewhere with your bees and expand a little bit and be sustainable getting rid of comb prematurely is just a waste and i've never seen any issue using combs that were well goodness even 10 years old much less three years old and i'll have to blow through this make sure the queen's on there they're covering that brood up lots of emerging brood on this frame and this one so we're going to be taking this frame as well and again giving them that drawn comb crushed all those cells put it back together this one has more space put it up on top that's what we do when we see a hive in that kind of condition with the swarm tendency if we come across one that has some capped queen cells we're going to have to do things a little bit differently and we'll try to get that on video man there's just bees i mean just look at those bees behind laurel over there just doing orientation flights and foraging it's absolutely gorgeous don't pay attention to my beat up subaru but it's been paid off for a long time man the bees are just going at it gorgeous day thanks for sharing it with us and i hope you and your bees have a great rest of the year see ya

Channel: Kamon Reynolds - Tennessee's Bees

Views: 89,987

Keywords: beekeeping, beekeeper, honeybees, bees, Kamon Reynolds, honey, How to install a package of bees, How to install a nuc, package vs nuc challenge, how to make honey, beehive, provap 110, Tennessee beekeeping, Tennessee beekeepers, Package of bees, swarming, swarm, swarm control, queen cell, queen cup, swarmtrap, swarm trapping, how to make a swarm trap, swarm trap, bee cast, Swarm Season Hive management, Swarm season

Id: 1YEv7w85p2k

Length: 33min 15sec (1995 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021