Stopping swarming and the Demaree method

hey everybody so this is uh no let's try it again I'm gonna start over again no we're gonna study no no we are going to start again so so this is part two of The Last progression of the nuke and package installation that we did and because we ran into an issue as you all have seen and uh we're now going to go through the options on what to do with this Hive so this is the nuke and it wants to swarm so again we're going to show you different options what to do if you do have extra equipment what to do if you don't have extra equipment we're going to go through the whole gamut so hopefully this will help you folks out that seem to be having some of the same issues that are occurring here so let's get into it so today actually for those of you who have been waiting on this we are going to do a dimari split so I know we have some members out there that were talking about that and that's what we're going to demonstrate here today all right here we go okay so what do we do we've gone through the hive we did everything right we had the fruit chamber Grew From one box to two boxes as it grew up from here we put on next box on and we didn't put a queen excluder on there's no excuse for the bees to want to swarm but they do work this warm and so what we want to do is we've got a few options of what what we tend what options we have for us first of all what we could do is cut out all the queen cells and cross our fingers and hope we've done it right but we'll have to go in again and again and again to do it every week reason being is that unless we do something to change the mode of operation the cutting out the green cells would not in its own right be enough to stop them storming in the long run a swan will never leave without another queen emerge about to emerge from a queen cell so in theory if you cut out every single queen cell then there will not be a swamp issued for about another week but what will happen is as soon as you close that Hive up they find they've got no Queen cell they still want the swamp so they'll build another queen cell and another one and another one and you go in there the following week and you cut that out before this queen cells get big enough that the hive is ready to spawn so cutting out Queen cells is a way of postponing swarming but unless you do something else it's not necessarily going to stop the swarming because they're going to keep on trying and the other problem is anyone who's cut out Queen cells will know finding all the queen cells can be an issue as well so if you miss one of those green cells you're going to get a score and they're very good at hiding swamps yes so that was one of the options keeping note flew away and we're not going to edit that out either the other option that we could do is we could split the hive we could take advantage of the fact that we've got multiple Queen cells in the hive and we can split two brood Chambers one containing the queen to one Hive and one containing Queen cells to the other Hive so we could split the hive in half two third option we could take advantage of other colonies in the apiary we could cut out all the queen cells but as we know that won't be enough to stop the swarming but take a look at what's sitting next to it we've got a much smaller Colony right next to it so if we cut out all the queen cells from this Colony put it all back together but then just simply swap the positions of these two colonies now the field force from this big Colony goes into the small one and the field force from the small one goes into the big one that means this Colony has lost a whole load of bees that is enough to stop swarming and then you don't have to keep on going in coming out Queen cells now the small hives now got a big field for us it needs an extra Center on it as well so that's another way of doing it without losing the momentum within the a period as a whole it just rearranging the workforce okay another option we could cut out the queen cells and like we did with our package there we could checkerboard The Brood chamber so in this case what we could do is put frames of foundation in between frames of brood comb in here and we would need a third boot Chamber Of course to do this because we need somewhere to put the other Brew and that is sometimes enough to stop swarming as well having cut out the queen cells because what you've done is reduce the density of population within the brood chamber it's probably going to work but it doesn't necessarily it doesn't always work it's something anytime you're trying to do with control this one you've got to watch them carefully finally we're gonna do that and there are more options as well you could split it make mute you can do all sorts of things but the other option is in this particular case all I'm going to do is try and stop the swarming but continue the colony growing and growing and growing and this is called the Demari method and what we're going to basically do is we're going to find the queen who's somewhere Within These two possibly up even in the honey super right now we're going to take that Queen we're going to put a confined head to this bottom Brew chamber we're also going to remove all of the other brood about one frame from that fruit chamber and put it higher up the hive and now the cream is left in the area and and she's going to be held down there with a clean excluder which I've got to get anyway she's gonna be held down there and there'll be just a single frame of brood with the queen and then lots of empty space and what's going to happen is all the workforce that we're looking after The Brood they go up with the blue chambers that reduces the density of these around where the queen is laying eggs you will now have all the rooms she possibly needs and the colony will recognize the queen needs more room and they will draw out any home Foundation out there to make sure the queen has plenty of space we will have to come back here a week later because the area that we've moved the brood to because it's separated from the queen sometimes they're going to build Queen cells so next week we're gonna have to go in here despite the rain and cut out all with any clean cells that are developing in the moved root chamber but more of that when we actually do it so let's actually get on with it I've done a lot of in production here um we're into these plenty of smoke because this most certainly will uh they don't like this amongst the pigeons as it were yes they do not like this well if they don't like it when you do it well no they definitely don't like it when I do it but I will tell you this um and doing this this Demari method this is for honey production and of my one successful damari I just took over 100 pounds of honey off it um yesterday so it does work more bees in the honey soup than we had yesterday they're getting up there yeah I still don't think we've got much honey and I still think it's a low probability of the queen being up here but still because we've got no Chrome no Chrome up here yet we're not going to look for the queen in this part so again I'll put this over here now we're gonna see if we can be lucky to find the queen yes within a few few frames wouldn't that be a refreshing change it would be remember I'm with you though Peter so the odds of that yeah curses yeah nothing like shooting in the foot before we read that stuff if I didn't have bad luck I wouldn't have any at all so yeah nothing here it's full of honey this works much better if you've got a marked Queen I can't remember if we've got a map Queen in this Hive or not I think we've got a very slight mark on the queen oh she was supposed to new mark because Martin seemed to be coming after things this year this year has been terrible for colonies doing their own thing yep and that's because we're having an awful lot of bad days interspersed with a few good ones so when I forget a few good ones these rush out bring in loads of food then all of a sudden we get the bad days again and they're confined to quarters yeah if we had a consistent run of good days the bees would get into the mode of producing honey rather than producing um thinking about swarming now we're doing two things right now we're looking for the queen and we're looking for Queen selves we see Queen cells we'll cut them out we know there were at least three clean cells in here yesterday got some eggs on this Frame just to sort of place where the queen would be refilling these spaces with eggs at least the ones that you want to spend some time on checking filling this space up with honey they certainly are drone brood at the bottom when you see that drone Brew check them carefully because they're really good at hiding those coin cells the little cup on the bottom there going on in that one look what I've got uh-huh she is here nice tiger stripe yep okay so our Queen is here so just for now so having found the queen she's going to be put into this little safe box just for now and now things happen relatively quickly yes we've been through these frames checking for himself continue to go through now we've got an empty space there it all becomes quite easy we did cut out Queen cells yesterday but here we got I think I saw some on the other side take him there let's see if we can see an egg in this one yep there's the egg so these are called charged Queen cells so we're setting them back oh not yet yeah boy just in time yeah check both sides of the frames here and look how what's how this would be full of royal jelly look at that full royal jelly but a quarter inch deep and here's the Queen the lava right there this green cell is almost capped not quite getting half an inch deep full of royal jelly time okay so I'm just gonna move this to one side it's already got about 25 30 pounds we have honey supers with 60 or 70 pounds of honey in them likewise here now we have to go through this just to check to see that whether we've got Queen cells or not what we're going to do make it easier and avoid more bending down than necessary I'm gonna take this super I'm gonna put it up top here and we're going to take this super and put it down here so this is going to become the new root chamber and in this fruit chamber we're going to put our queen with the brood that she's got a couple of frames of drawn foam and if you don't have some drawn foam try and get some drawn color make frames of honey in your boob chamber and extract the honey from it always useful it's like gold dust having the opportunity to have some drawn out foam ready to use for purposes something like this the rest of these frames are just foundation so they are gonna go we're gonna take this drawn comb it's in the middle Queen and with what little brood she's got is gonna go in in here so all right as we'll do it now we've got some brood got the queen double checking that there's no Queen cells Queen is busy laying eggs in here where eyes on the queen again she is even when you know the queen is not there she is right in the middle here she got her up here we go look at her look at all those bees attending to her okay so Feet's growing in the middle down there and we're gonna put a queen excluder on there to hold her in place then we're gonna do something weird we're gonna put the honey soup in there this is empty yeah I'm just throwing foam okay now we're gonna put this brood chamber on but we have to go through it to make sure there's no Queen cells in it I would say for Weight Wise this feels like it's got about 20 cells in here see how my saskatras bees are staying nice and calm doing it at your home that's right I do have one saskatcheater type and they are super sweet my other ones not so much but boy they're making honey so what's going to happen is these Colony these hives here I mean these frames are going to become the next the first honey supers uh even even they'll put honey in here well before they put it in here because as The Brood emerges and the backfield yeah look at that I'm shaking the bees off the double check I wasn't missing them okay you know actually when they make form cells they make 10 15 20 sometimes that's about this take it off Quick Check and I've even seen them make sure you check the edges I've seen Queen cells on the edges of the frame almost down in the scene yeah double benefit of putting that film brewed is probably cutting out mites as well these preferentially they might preferentially were parents Colony benefits in that regard even though they don't like it it does irritate towels both sides okay that tasted good actually I always said I want to try real jelly I just did um it's actually quite tasty protein shake yeah thank you now when we come back in here in a week we're gonna find Queen cells scattered amongst The Brood as opposed to swarm cells which tend to be hanging on the edges clean cells on these will be emergency cells because the bees were going to act up here something like there is no Queen and then they'll be drawing out Queen cells on any four day old Blobby they can find okay by the time we've gone through the hive after a week we've gone through all before that there will be no more for Dale Barbie UPS here that one Captain nope because we're going into every week where they're spotted them yeah hopefully I'm gonna step back because I'm full so again these these upper root Chambers are now so far away from the queen was way down there foreign they hide them so good now if we were to miss one of these green cells The Colony could swarm because they'd have a clean cell merely ready to remove we don't want that to happen so we're making sure that everything cell is being removed all right so that one's done and we've already been through this one looking for clean cells heavier already oh you think it's heavy now certainly will now when I set up the memory split like this last year and harvested 125 pounds of honey from it later in the year so it's a way of making a colony that wants to swarm into a monster hive that can't that won't swarm and produces loads and loads of honey for you now we just need one more frame to go in here and uh you wanna get one and then we'll be done with this demeri manipulation we were lucky we found the queen on this one um can't find the queen what we end up doing is shaking all of the bees down into that lower chamber and boy they do not like that they boil right out of the bottom because all of a sudden you've put all the bees down in that bottom chamber which crowds it right out but that is the other way of doing it if you can't find the queen thank you foreign there we have it there we go tomorrow manipulation and what's going to happen now is this fruit chamber the Queen's on a single frame here we put a couple of drawn Combs around it so she's got somewhere to put stuff right away she can't get going to town they're gonna go where the heck is all the Brews the shall stop laying as fast as you can the bees will start clustering down here and drawing out Chrome as fast as they can do and hopefully as soon as they finish that they're going to get up here and stop throwing the honey soup around as well in the meantime all this comb and Brew The Brood up here will all emerge as it emerges they'll backfill and they'll put honey up here and they'll only have brewed downstairs it's called the Demari manipulation and there's a great way to build up a monster behind Okay so from now on our videos are going to be package bees progression and Demari Hive progression all right good this one went so nice and calm I should go all right we'll see you folks take care

Channel: Beekeeping with The Bee Whisperer

Views: 6,125

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Id: HfMd09b19do

Length: 23min 38sec (1418 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 24 2023