New to flow hives and their management. I have a flow hive and a couple days ago they swarmed unexpectedly and due to illness I missed the chance to stop it from happening. I started the hive in the first week of December and a have harvested 20 kilos of honey from it to date. My question is should I have put a second brood box on to avoid the swarming? When I had all langstroth hives back in the ‘80’s I would have two brood boxes then the super to slow down the chance of swarming but not having seen this practice with the flow hive I didn’t do this. Was this my mistake?
There’s a variety of swarm management strategies from which to choose. The principle is the same. Ensure the queen has room to lay and for workers to store food. If they run out of room and there’s good resources, they could decide to swarm.
I run 8F single brood hives. During the swarm season, I’ll give the queen room by moving a frame or two of capped brood above the queen excluder and replacing with drawn comb or foundation. When the moved brood emerges, I cycle out the old comb. I usually replace the queen every second year. Typically, a new queen doesn’t swarm in her first year.
I’m not a fan of double brood hives. Too much lifting for inspections, more frames to inspect and twice the territory in which to find the queen. But there are plenty of beekeepers using doubles.
Since Varroa hit, nothing is the way it was. Now even brand new queens swarm within weeks or are superseded. The new normal is taking some time to adjust.