Congestion in the Brood Nest

Tags

beekeeping, congestion in the brood nest, management, nurse bees, spring management, swarm prevention

Congestion. A topic I repeatedly misunderstand. And, in all likelihood I remain confused. Congestion, which leads to swarm behavior.

I used to think congestion was not enough room within the hive to comfortably house all of the bees. Kinda like when your cousin comes to town with his 6 kids and stays for a week. Apparently this is in error. Adding an empty box with foundation may help a little because the wax producing aged bees may go up and draw some wax but that’s not it, really. I mean your cousin’s kids are still holed up in your bathroom even if you make them sleep on the back porch. With my cousin’s kids it’s not congestion in the house, it’s congestion in my bathroom. With the bees it’s not congestion in the hive, it’s congestion in the brood nest.

So, I’ve read about opening up the brood nest with an empty frame. I tried this a few years ago (2015) only I couldn’t bear to place an empty frame in there so I placed a frame with foundation. Mistake again. Placing a frame of foundation only split the brood nest up causing more problems rather than helping.

So a couple years ago (2016) I thought maybe it’s time for me to switch to nine frames since I have drawn comb now. That has to be more “open” right? Turns out I got it wrong again. What this would do is reduce the number of frames for bees to hang out making them more likely to be crowded on each frame.

Okay, so what I understand now, I think, is (how can I really know anything when it comes to bees?) that it is nurse bee congestion in the brood area, not bee congestion. And it is not simply too many nurse bees. I mean it IS too many nurse bees, but more importantly it is unemployed nurse bees in the brood nest. The nurse bees are getting in each other’s way. There is an overabundance of out-of-work nurse bees for the amount of work available. It’s like ladies night and there are only 4 guys in the bar.

So, what does a colony do when it has too many nurse bees, which also happen to be coming into wax creating age? Swarm, that’s what.

So how do we reduce their unemployment and keep them in the hive? Give them work. 1) Add drawn comb in the brood area for the queen to lay in, producing more work space and more employment opportunities for nurse bees as well as spreading them out (reducing congestion). 2) Also add drawn comb above the brood nest for the bees to store nectar in thereby reducing the tendency to backfill the brood nest with nectar.

All this adding of drawn comb into critical areas promotes more work space, egg laying, and work opportunities also creates some disruption in the hive, something I consider beneficial during the period the bees are contemplating swarming. It may also allow for Queen pheromone to be more equally distributed amongst the workers which satisfies another swarm theory.

This worked for me last year so I’m going to confirm by trying it again this year. Good luck with your bees!

Midlands Beekeeping Calendar for April

Tags

beekeeping, chores, feeding bees, honey bees, management, package bees, Swarm control, swarm prevention, swarm traps, swarms

All beekeeping is local. These chores are for the Midlands of South Carolina. April starts with the nectar flow in earnest and the beekeeper is busy with hive space management, swarm prevention, and swarm control. The bees will be in high gear growing populations, seeking opportunities to swarm, and storing excess nectar. Weather in the Midlands typically stabilizes with few surprises and the bees are actively flying longer and longer hours each day.

Beginning beekeepers get a “gentle” introduction to beekeeping as the bees are less defensive due to the availability of plentiful food. Also swarming behavior is not typical during a colony’s first season if space management is followed and the bees provided with proper space as the colony grows.

1) Monitor for queen cells – check suspect hives every seven days for swarm cells hanging on bottom bar in boxes above the brood chamber in hives with screen bottom boards and all boxes in hives with solid bottom boards.

2) Prevent swarms. Control swarming. Capture swarms.

3) Plan on checking every two weeks for hive body management i.e. space management.

4) If not yet added, place additional honey super(s) at the beginning of this month. On strong hives, install two honey supers if frames have drawn comb. Weaker colonies should receive less supers accordingly. If drawn comb is not available and foundation is used supers should be placed one at a time. Periodic checks should be made during the honey flow to see if additional supers are needed.

5) Install and feed any packages and nucleus hives purchased if given foundation. Feed splits. Feed captured swarms.

6) Unite weak colonies with strong colonies unless suspect of disease. Replace weak queens.

7) Make splits if increasing total hives is a goal with mated queens or allow colonies to re-queen themselves. Splits can be used to curtail swarm behavior but will decrease  honey production. If increase is desired, split any hives not previously split and re-queen any weak queens. Queens should now, or soon, be available if needed.

8) Actively manage your hives designated for honey. Manage brood space allowing the queen room to lay. Utilize other methods of swarm prevention. There is no longer time for a colony to re-queen itself in time to raise foraging bees in time for the nectar flow. If needed, add a purchased mated queen or combine colonies if not diseased if seeking honey production.

9) Begin IPM program. Place beetle traps or other hive beetle management items.

10) Watch for swarms daily and inspect for swarm cells no less than every 7 days. (Bee math alert: An egg laid in a queen cup is capped on day 9 at which point the colony may swarm.)

11) If not already done, bait hives should be in position at various points 360 degrees surrounding apiary. Place bait hives at 50 to 150 yards away from colonies, edges of open fields, close to “bee” aerial landmarks, scent lightly with lemongrass oil, and a 1 1/4″ circular entrance equals the 2 square inch recommendation.

12) Notice Dogwoods blooming and azaleas in earnest the first week. Sassafras and Tulip Poplar blooming. Holly may be late this year and bloom in early April but is short. Also, notice the increasing greening up of many, many nectar producing trees.

13) Email your club Secretary asking what you can do to help, or volunteer to lend a hand in your organization. Many hands make light work. If you’d like to see your organization grow as well as offer and maintain your current level of member services your help is needed.

For your viewing pleasure this month Kirk Anderson show us how to capture a swarm:

The above are general guidelines for the average bee colony in the Midlands of South Carolina. We all have hives that may be outperforming the average. We also have colonies that underperform the average. Use your judgement in making changes suggested here. Beekeeping is an art as well as a science. Only you know the many, many particulars associated with your physical hives as well as the general health and population of your colonies.

For your viewing pleasure here’s Greta Garbo in 1936 “Camille.”

Swarm Control by Bill’s Russian Bee Blog

Tags

beekeeping, checkerboarding, Dr. Jim Tew, spring management, Swarm control, swarm prevention, Walt Wright

Here are two articles on a topic we should brush up on now that swarm season is almost here. The first article is on Checkerboarding, a swarm prevention technique invented by Walt Wright. The second article is titled, Swarm Control and Management by Dr. James Tew. (The second article is a little misaligned but you should be able to find it elsewhere.)

Checkerboarding is a relatively new approach to swarm prevention. Although it has only been published for about 15 years, it defies the old adage that “swarming is inevitable.” This submittal is intended to substantiate or quantify the advertised reliability.

Implementation of the checkerboarding (CB) manipulation is disgustingly simple. The manipulation consists of removing alternate frames of honey from the top box and replacing those frames with empty comb suitable for rearing brood. Since there is no brood nest disturbance, it can be done in late winter before the brood nest expands into the top box of capped honey. After the initial manipulation, to sustain swarm prevention reliability, maintain empty comb at the top for the colony to grow into with brood nest expansion. If that sounds too simple to be effective, you are in good company. Almost nobody believes it would get the reliability that is inherent in the approach.

(cont.)

Read the full article here: Swarm Control — Bill’s Russian Bee Blog

Happy Birthday Walt Wright

Tags

beekeeping, beekeeping history, education, famous beekeepers, honey bee swarms, swarm prevention, swarms, Walt Wright

Walt Wright was born and raised in Burtonsville, MD, then a barefoot country boy area, and now suburbia of a sprawling Washington, DC. He enlisted in the Air Force to get electronics training, and served as a radar repairman. After service time he joined General Electric in maintaining overseas sites of the Security Service (spell that SPY).

Still with GE, in 1960 he relocated to Huntsville, Ala./Redstone Arsenal to make his contribution on the nation’s quest to put a man on the moon. Development of the propulsive stages of the Saturn V moon rocket was accomplished by NASA on Redstone Arsenal. His responsibility on that program was electronic compatibility of subsystems within stages and compatibility between propulsive stages and the electronics of the instrument ring. No interaction (interference/noise) was permitted between systems on the man-rated launch vehicle.

For the Shuttle program, an added responsibility was systems engineer for on-board Range Safety components. The Air Force has autonomous authority to destroy any launch from the Cape area that poses a threat to populated areas of eastern Florida. Astronauts on board is no exception. If the launch strays from the predicted trajectory, the Air Force can destroy the vehicle by radio command. On-board equipment to implement destruct includes the command receiving and processing electronics and pyrotechnics to disperse propellants.

Walt is aware that the above work history provides very weak credentials to be considered as a honey bee “expert.” He took up beekeeping in his late fifties to supplement retirement income. Confident in his trouble shooting skills, he accepted the challenge “very early” to get to the bottom of the swarming problem. He credits observation skills, sharpened by years of electronics trouble-shooting, for solving the riddle. He was surprised that it was as easy as it was. When his hypothesis was in place in three years, he thought at first it must be in error. Surely, thousands of beekeepers, looking into millions of hives, could not possibly have missed the obvious. His conclusion: beekeepers see, but do not observe, or ask themselves why the bees do what they do.

Honey bees are motivated by survival of the colony. Survival of the existing colony is priority one. In the spring, priority two is the generation of the reproductive swarm. Not even that much is described in the popular literature. Walt concentrated his investigation of swarming in terms of colony activities that support those survival objectives. His findings are a radical departure from literature conventional wisdom. As an example, he claims that all the elements of “congestion”, such as bee crowding and nectar in the brood nest, are deliberate steps to implementing the reproductive swarm process, and not the other way around. The literature has congestion as the “cause” and that’s backwards.

Getting his observations published has been slow moving. Editors of the magazines have an obligation to their subscribers to weed out the chaff from crackpots. Natural skepticism creates mostly rejections of submitted articles. For the year 06 he resorted to writing articles on general beekeeping techniques to build a base of credibility.

He looks forward to presenting his observations through Beesource. It should not be necessary via this medium to appease editors or their advisors. As a start in telling it like it is, he announces point blank: The mystery of reproductive swarming has been solved.

*******************
Walter William Wright
August 24, 1932 – February 6, 2016
*******************

Reference:

http://beesource.com/point-of-view/walt-wright/

Title	Publication	Date
*Spring Reversal Not Good Management for All Areas?	American Bee Journal	Jan-96
*Spring Management is Mandatory With Tracheal Mites	American Bee Journal	Feb-96
*A Different Twist on Swarm Prevention, Part 1	American Bee Journal	Mar-96
*A Different Twist on Swarm Prevention, Part 2	American Bee Journal	Apr-96
*Checkerboarding – A Preliminary Update on My Swarm Control Method	American Bee Journal	Jun-96
*Checkerboarding Works	American Bee Journal	Jul-96
*Swarm Prevention Alternative – Checkerboarding Results and Conclusions	American Bee Journal	Nov-96
*Tennessee Early Spring Management	Bee Culture	Dec-96
*Playing It Safe	Bee Culture	Feb-97
*Swarm Prevention in Tennessee	Bee Culture	Mar-97
*Apply Survival Traits of Honey Bees for Swarm Prevention and Increased Honey Production, Part 1	American Bee Journal	Feb-02
*Apply Survival Traits of Honey Bees for Swarm Prevention and Increased Honey Production, Part 2	American Bee Journal	Mar-02
*Nectar Management 101	Bee Culture	Feb-02
*Is It Congestion?	Bee Culture	Feb-03
*Survival Traits of the European Honey Bee	Bee Culture	Mar-03
*Seasonal Colony Survival Traits	Bee Culture	Apr-03
*Swarm Preperation	Bee Culture	May-03
*Colony Spring Operation	Bee Culture	Jun-03
*Colony Decision Making – And a Look at Observation Hive *Behavior	Bee Culture	Oct-03
*Evils of the Double Deep	Bee Culture	Nov-03
*Survival Traits #6 – Operational Effects on Nectar Accumulation	Bee Culture	Apr-04
Pollen Box Overwintering	Bee Culture	Sep-04
Do You Get Black Locust in the Supers?	Bee Culture	Jan-05
Are They Supersedure or Swarm Cells?	Bee Culture	Jul-05
Fall Feeding	Bee Culture	Nov-05
Nine Frame Brood Chamber? Never!	Bee Culture	Jan-06
Drone Management	Bee Culture	Mar-06
Deficiencies in Design of the Queen Excluder	Bee Culture	Apr-06
Advantages/Disadvantages of Swarm Prevention By Checkerboarding/Nectar Management	Bee Culture	May-06
The Reasons Why the Queen Excluder Limits Honey Production	Bee Culture	Jun-06
“Attic” Ventilation	Bee Culture	Jul-06
Yarn # 1 – Little Momma	Bee Culture	Aug-06
*Backfilling – What’s That?	Bee Culture	Sep-06
Freebees	Bee Culture	Oct-06
Nest Scouts and the Dance Language	Bee Culture	Nov-06
Boardman Feeder/Stimulative Feeding	Bee Culture	Feb-07
Splits Are a Sound Investment	Bee Culture	Mar-07
*The Capped Honey Reserve	Bee Culture	Apr-07
Art of Beekeeping	Bee Culture	Sep-07
CCD – Another Opinion	Bee Culture	Sep-08
How Many Eggs CAN a Queen Lay?	Bee Culture	Nov-08
More on the Pollen Reserve	BeeSource POV	Mar-09
Adverse Effects of the “Patty”	Bee Culture	Apr-09
Propolis – Another 5 Percenter	Bee Culture	May-09
Objections To The Double Deep	Bee Culture	Dec-09
Colony Age Effects	Bee Culture	Feb-10
Small Hive Beetle – My Perspective	Bee Culture	Jul-10
*Prevent Swarming – Before The Bees Even Think About It	Bee Culture	Feb-11
*Increased Honey Production of Checkerboarded Colonies	Bee Culture	Apr-11
*CB Saves Work, Time, And Expenses	Bee Culture	Jun-11
*Nectar Storage Before The Main Flow	BeeSource POV
Nectar Management Works! – by Rob Koss	BeeSource POV
Management For Honey Production	BeeSource POV
Supplement To Management For Honey Production Handout	BeeSource POV
Note: Title with an asterisk (*) in front are pertinent to Nectar Management.

The Eternal Question – How to prevent swarming? by The Walrus and the Honeybee

Tags

beekeeping, honey bees, Swarm control, swarm prevention, swarms

How to prevent swarming?

I previously wrote about some potential factors involved in the swarming of honey bees and why swarm prevention and control are so important for the beekeeper. The idea that we can prevent swarms is probably misguided; it is after all what bees are programmed to do, it is how they reproduce, but we must nevertheless educate ourselves and do what little we can in this regard.

The people who are most qualified to advise on swarming, or any other honey bee management topic, are the commercial honey farmers who manage thousands of colonies and rely upon their efforts to earn their living from it. This is why I will be quoting from such people extensively here – they have lived and breathed a life with bees and I would rather take heed of their words than those of a keen hobbyist or a well read scholar.

“If I were to meet a man perfect in the entire science and art of bee-keeping, and were allowed from him an answer to just one question, I would ask for the best and easiest way to prevent swarming.” C.C.Miller, Fifty Years Among the Bees

more…

Read full article here: The Eternal Question — The Walrus and the Honeybee