The Balance Between Swarm Prevention And Honey Production

[Music] hello bearded B people welcome back to being KB's I wanted to talk a little bit about the battle between honey production and swarm prevention because those two if done to their extremes you know or you know set off as a goal one or the other can really contradict so the idea is swarm prevention is to get these bees to consider themselves not built up yet the second thing to consider themselves having taking care of the job of building up during the build-up portion of gear these are gonna get up and go so the next idea and that's thought is well what what convinces them of that fact well nectar coming in convinces them of the fact that it's the build-up portion of the year and having built up as usually it's decided by weather and has placed too late so if this bottom box at this blue box is absolutely packed with capped brood or being filled with nectar is not allowing the clean any spaces away the beads inside the - have never seen the outside I don't know what's going on outside they only read the cues that are going on inside the hive and those bees are going to consider the job of having built up completed so as soon as that happens we're gonna start making these are going to be gone eight days so we have to convince them constantly that they're still building up until the swarm portion of the year is done obviously it's a little bit more difficult doing that with single brood chambers as opposed to doubles but generally the idea is knocking the swarm impulse out of them in the spring vias what and then constant paying attention to the brood area freeze making certain that they're not getting back filled and making certain that she's not completed her job totally making certain that it's not filled entirely with cat food I'm seeing open cells you know obviously for the most part those are cells where these had emerged recently but that's part of the process too so you know you don't have to always remove all capped brood that would deplete your bees or deplete your hive of bees but you just have to kind of constantly play that game of balance and keeping enough population to be enough brood to regenerate that population and keeping enough open area in which that Queen can continue laying I have cells here so this is an apt video so I have two little Queen cuffs there on the bottom with larvae in them I do see eggs so I think that queen is in here and what I'm gonna try to do is find her real quick did I make sure I'm not grabbing her and I'm gonna pull two through frames out of this hi I hate working with gloves I should do a video on that the only reason I have gloves on right now is because I'm messing around this might away clicks good now this colony looks good it didn't met all of the criteria that I was talking about before it has open cells for her to lay and yet they're still preparing the storm just kind of freeze that the beekeeping there's no hard line this is how it is just how it isn't these do what they want the best we can do is try to analyze the situation and take an educated guesses what they're doing and what they're going to do all right I found her you have two great friends and move it over to his foot box but I have over hey Maggie I'm trying to grab fast food just any food okay now on even more ideal situation would have been to replace this with empty but drawn prints but this time of year I don't have any of those left over so it's all foundation from here on out but the good thing is the nectar is flowing they'll be able to start drawing these out quickly and then you know the Queen doesn't have to wait until they get the whole thing drawn out and ordered uh she'll start laying in it almost immediately when they start drawing it out and then it'll be considered extra space but she's not leading to you and continue to ward off the swarm so I'll get back into that box within the next six or so days six or seven days just to make sure that what I did the actions that I took worked and that they stopped their swarm preparations I do expect that to be the case but if not then I'll come back through and I'll end up pulling the Queen out and doing a true swarm simulation split but for the most part when you get it right on right at the beginning or just preferably just a little bit before they start the preparation taking out a couple frames and just kind of convincing them they have a little bit more work to do will at least delay it long enough for them to put some money up and then you can split them later so I probably won't be doing all that but I do expect these bees to stay here and continue making that box heavy as heck so like I said I'll get back in here and another week and check ourselves so difficult balancing swarming and honey production and it's just a little bit more difficult with singles singles are nice because you can work them really easily they overwinter very very very well and you can own you know overwinter them with putting one bucket of syrup on them it's just a real good way to keep bees in my opinion is except for the nectar the honey portion of the year it just becomes a little bit problematic and a little bit difficult running around trying to stay ahead of them and make sure that they're not back though in that area with nectar but that's not what they're doing right now and they're putting it in the in the honey box that's awesome I'm happy to see that so get out there make sure your bees are not getting ready yet to swarm all pull out the cap brood if you can and if they are planning to hopefully you're putting off a bunch of honey like I am so thanks for watching get out there and have some fun with your bees see ya

Channel: B&K Bees

Views: 17,745

Keywords: beekeeping, bees, beekeeper, beekeeping tutorial

Id: E0FQvNA9o4o

Length: 9min 28sec (568 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 19 2019