Swapping Queens Using a Push-In Cage | S3 E7

[Music] hey everybody it is Emmie welcome back to my third season of beekeeping today is May 11th 2019 it is Mother's Day weekend which around here in New England is the time for swarming so it looks like swarming came a little bit early about a week early people here on my local beekeeping Club have reported spotting swarms and catching the swarms last week and speaking of which I suspect my big hive which I was trying to prevent from storming may have swarmed my last hive check was three days ago when I went in there I could not find my Queen I went through it twice and I found a capped queen cell which I moved over to a temporary nuke and I tore down all signs of swarm cups and swarmed cells and I am back three days later to see if I spot any eggs because I did spot some eggs during the last inspection but not spot for Queen so three days later if there are no new eggs I know that she definitely swarmed but that's what I'm gonna be doing today I'm gonna be going into my big hive seeing if I seen the egg seeing if I see my queen seeing if I see any swarm cells I've been tearing them down incidentally because I don't want them to swarm number one and number two I don't want my apiary to be any bigger so rather than doing a split I just wanted to maintain three hives because I don't want to have that many hives but in hindsight I think I probably should have split them and I think that's probably what I will do next year is preemptively split them earlier because I don't really like having to go into my hives every five days or seven days just to tear everything down the bees weren't too happy the last couple times I've been in there we've got a lot of rain today as the first sunny day we've had in about three days and it's supposed to rain again tomorrow so the biggest were very cranky I had to really tape myself up I've had to get suited up which I really haven't had to do in the past and I don't really like that so I think what I'll do next season is do preemptive splits so this morning we went out to Connecticut and met up with Glenn over at Cedar Lane apiaries I really wanted to get my hands on a sasquatch I was Queen but he didn't have any but I did pick up at Kearney Olin reason why that is if that big hive is queenless which I suspect it is I'm want to replace the fleet so I can maintain the honey production if there is a queen I will place my queen that I bought today in the temporary nuclear I made and destroy that Queen cell and I'll just count that as a resource nuke what else yeah it was great to see Glenn he has tons of advice he's been keeping these for 59 years and he made a point of saying that he does splits early on and then what he does is we combine them in fall which I would love to do because again I don't want so many hives so what he does is he takes his nukes and he combines them with his bigger hives and he just lets the Queen's Duke it out he introduces them and then the Queen's the fittest queen will win and then you've got a jumbo high of coming going into winter which i think is a great idea I'm looking for ways to reduce the number of times that I have to go into the hives it's intrusive it takes time so doing preemptive splits I think is the way to go but I don't know this is just my third year after all so day before Mother's Day I am spending the day to go through my big hive I'm gonna see if I can spot my queen or signs of her if not I'm gonna reintroduce the Queen I just got she's sitting in my pocket let me get her up for you there she is and she's tagged bright green because she's a 20-19 Queen brand-new clean parney olan now if I need to introduce her into the big hive I'm gonna be using something called a push in cage so a couple winters ago Michael Palmer came to our local bee club and gave a little talk and he mentioned the pushing cage as a way of introducing the Queen to a hive particularly if you've got a big hive that has got its eye on or it's mind of its own it's a great way to convince beehive to accept her because what you're doing is allowing the queen with this cage to lay so once she starts releasing those pheromones and she's laying the other bees are more likely to accept her to acceptance rate is much higher the cage prevents them from killing her and she's got some food and so I'm gonna try that technique out today I have a little cage and yeah so enough jibber jabbering let's go ahead and get into the hives I checked on this hive which is the backup nuke looks like there's a dead drone there bees are still alive bees are still there and here is my big one lots of activity let's get in there so they're already up in the super I think there's no cleaning up in here all right so we've got some nectar up here so these girls are bringing in nectar nice so I'm just checking on these two supers up here to see if there's any activity going on snores there hasn't been a lot of great foraging days because we've had so much rain so I'm just checking to see what's going on [Music] empty this one's heavy lots of nectar in that one cleaning off mold so start to bring in some there so between those two circulars are probably have four frames of net nerve so started these girls are not happy with me all right let's keep going in here these girls would rather see so now I'm gonna burn in here start looking for my queen if she's here so I'm looking for signs of the Queen or the Queen herself a little bit of smoke and these girls are not happy with me being around which makes me feel like they might again be queenless that's why I'm all suited up today because these girls have not been happy with me at the last moment type checks nor have they been kind okay that's an empty frame oh it actually has nectar on it great all right that's a beautiful laying pattern this Queen was a Reba grant queen she was a Minnesota high genic very good layer and I did my best to keep her around so no Queen sells swarm cells on that frame looking for eggs not seen any ex so far oh wait yeah DC ass I do see egg so maybe my queen is in here I'm seeing eggs in here so maybe she didn't swarm great so let's just keep looking yes I see eggs okay let's keep looking yes I see eggs this whole section is covered with AIDS so my queen is here somewhere all right I do see a queen Cup and I'm gonna destroy it lots of eggs actually singly laying eggs so she's here cuz I was in here three days ago and this is all laid up oof - look there's pinch of queen cups right there - him destroy those it's good to look in the corners as well well now let's just gotta find our clean so if I find my queen I'm actually gonna separate her and split her okay another queen cup not using much smoke today because I don't want to drive her down too far a couple more cream cups right there [Music] so we see here several clean cups right there right there and we see a developing peanut right here right there that's a three day old queen cell with a larva and royal jelly in there so I'm gonna take all those down okay so one two three pink cups please all destroyed four five six seven eight what's the swarm of cups nine ten so pinch those all down [Music] I found my clean I found the blue queen right there there she is she is not swarmed awesome [Music] [Music] these girls want a swarm check this out look at this little cluster right there look at that see that right there these are all swarm cells I was just in here three days ago that's what happens in three days rid of all those down here we have more but I did find my plane so she has not swarmed yet so my plan is to give these a new clean and take out the old queen all righty so this is exciting it's May 11 2009 teen I just went to my big hive and I found evidence of my queen I saw lots of eggs so I went in there three days so I know that she was still in there and I was searching and searching and I finally found her I'm so happy because that means they did not swarm my original queen is still in there although the bees are very testy so now what I'm gonna do is replace the clean and take the old queen out and do a split as you can see there are bees hovering here they're very pissed off so I'm gonna use a pushing cave to introduce my new carniola and queen so I pulled out a frame here and this has capped brood and it has some nectar in it so what I'm gonna do is take this pushing cage and we're gonna place it right here this is hardware cloth I believe it's number eight hardware cloth so the bees cannot get in there and kill the new queen now it's important to get a little bit of nectar or some kind of honey stores so the Queen has some food and when these worker bees emerge they will be loyal to her and they will help her out so there's also some open cells here which allow her to lay and release her pheromones which will increase the hives acceptance of their new clean so I think I'm going to use this section right over here because there's a good amount of nectar there's some new nurse bees and their space for lane so I think I'm going to use that will give her plenty of space and we want to make sure we don't trap any working on this under there because they are not loyal to this new clean and they might kill her so sometimes why I'm using the moon cave is to increase acceptance this is an established big hive and they are loyal to their between so I'm gonna do an initial kind of push in here and then there's my new queen I really wanted to get a SAS Katraj but I don't have any money oh and it is put her here and the trick is to get her out in here without getting any new bees in there so we're not newbies and the other worker bees in there so see how we can do that I've removed the oak a mesh got in there okay there she is perfect okay she is now I want to push this cage down really securely so that these can't crawl underneath okay there is a new queen right there so I'll come back in three days I'll come back on Tuesday and see if she's laying and if they've accepted her already let's go pop her into the highest point so basically what we're doing is we're disrupting this hive so they won't warm haven't yet this is our old queen we're gonna put her in the split shake those friends off now they're really pissed and we're going to place our new clean right in here these girls are angry this is a beautiful day right ladies so I will come back in on Tuesday and release her to make sure that she's been accepted good she's crawling right in there she's right there and with an introducer the ladies renew right in the middle of the rudeness okay now if make sure we've destroyed every single Swan stuff so this has become basically a super I'm gonna bring up some more syrup moving a little bit of truck reporting empty frame full frame and D frame full frame [Music] so now we're going into the split that I made three days ago so that all with that sugar water I gave them in there [Music] [Music] well ed any rate here's a puff squash that so your teacher I'm not gonna be feeding these girls well it's definitely on all right smaller hives are much easier to deal with so there's plenty of room for her to let go through the key make sure there's no cups fallen and syrup nectar good so we're gonna boost them with some nurse bees and a frame of capped brood do another check here and make sure there's no oh look right here that's hiding cleanups here empty but squish them anyways pretty good [Music] and another frame here has some capped brood got some nectar stores again I'm just searching for any clean cups some space in there for frito-lay as well put out the food together we're expecting some more rain today it's really the only day to be doing all right these girls are little pity owed now let me get my queen here is the original clean from that hive she did not swarm which I'm so happy here about my attempts in keeping them from storming we're not in vain and which is going to released the little teeny here [Music] all righty so I have a bunch of piston boobies but my big mother hive or my big number three hive which I've been so concerned about in terms of swarming actually did not swarm I found evidence of her laying and I actually found her which is great so I did a split I just introduced her to these but then I created three days ago got rid of the swarm sell place the old Queen in there introduced a new clean into the big moving hive and hopefully that will thwart them from swarming I'm gonna go into my other two hives a little bit later and I am so happy that I found my blue queen she was a great layer and good genetics and I hope she sticks around and I hope the introduction of the new green carniola in that hive was a good one I'll be back on Tuesday which is four days from now to see if they've accepted her okay never a dull moment and beekeeping it's Emmy it is May 11th 2019 thanks to nyan I'll see you next time bye [Music] you [Music]

Channel: emmymade extras

Views: 29,823

Keywords: bee, bees, beekeeping, backyard beekeeping, suburban beekeeping, queen swap, hive control, hive check, honey, honeycomb, beekeeping hardware, DIY, wire hardware cloth, queen, queen bee, swarm, swarm cells

Id: yN0B-eHGeyc

Length: 23min 36sec (1416 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 22 2019