Two days ago, I spotted queen cells in one of the colonies. A day later, I attempted a Demaree split but for the life of me could not find the queen, even after three passes of all the frames trying to find her. I aborted the mission! Although, I did knock down all the queen cells I found.
I would like to perform a split to so I don’t loose the bees to swarming and to maximize honey production but do not want another colony. Can I give her more room by introducing empty brood frames or is too late for that now?
Is there ever the possibility of performing a Demaree split or something similar, without finding the queen? I am planning to head back next Tuesday (day 7 after finding queen cells) to attempt to find her again. Hopefully, not too late.
Hi Brian, my suggestion would be to split the colony, making sure there is still new fertile eggs in each split. Take the split (temporarily) far enough away so that no bees return to the parent hive. Then after 5 days, check each colony for emergency queens, making sure that they are emergency queens & not swarm cells. Swarm cells will be slightly away from the brood, whereas emergency queens will come from within the brood.
The colony with emergency queens will be the queenless colony.
There is always a possibility that the queen got killed during your inspection. If that did happen, you should find emergency queens in both colonies.
It is always hard to find the queen when a colony is preparing to swarm, because there will usually be 2+ layers of bees on each frame. I always do preemptive swarm control splits, which makes finding the queen much easier, when looking through one layer of bees.
During spring & early summer, I focus on swarm prevention, rather than honey production. If you take care of swarm prevention, the honey production will take care of itself.
Thanks for the advice! It has got me thinking of the couple other hives I’ve got - start swarm prevention now! They’ve been fine the last couple of inspections but I suspect it’s only a matter of time before they begin swarm preparations.
Yes exactly Brian. I work on the assumption that every colony will swarm at some point during the spring or summer. I only use one brood/one honey super & I never let the honey supers get completely full of bees during spring. I like to see the outside frames with only a few bees on them. Once the outside frames get crowded, I do the preemptive swarm control split.
It’s worth remembering that colonies produce a lot of brood during the spring, therefore we can expect populations to rapidly explode to reach swarming strength.
A colony that looks reasonably strong this week, can turn into a super strong colony next week, merely due to all the emerging brood during that period, which outstrips the mortality rate.
Sooo…went in for my regular inspection yesterday not expecting to find the queen in the hive that’s preparing to swarm, to perhaps (a) do a split some other way or (b) tear down any new swarm cells and add more supers - hoping to buy me some more time. Well, found HRH on the last frame I was inspecting! Oh the joy! Caged her, removed all swarm cells, then performed a Demaree split.
However, I used two frames of drawn comb and the rest foundation for the bottom box (as I only had foundation). I know some other might discourage foundation but that’s what I had available. I’ll be going back a week later to inspect the top brood box to remove any queen cells.
As for the FH, it is bursting with bees. I put an 8-frame deep super on top of the flow frames for additional room.
this topic has been quiet for a while but I have a similar question. I successfully used the demaree method to split one of my hives last month and the colony is booming. I inspected my second hive yesterday and the brood box has exploded in numbers and there are several frames with solid capped worker brood. not too many drones/drone brood and a few practice cups but in brisbane things are heating up and I want reduce the possibility of swarm with a demaree split in this hive. I tried to find the queen yesterday but there were so many bees i think i’ll be lucky to spot her. If I cant find the Queen, can I shake bees from the brood frames I plan to move into the top box to ensure the Queen stays in the brood box allowing the nurse bees to move up to the uncapped brood? Or is my thinking incorrect. Thanks for any advice.
Hi Matt, I believe that to be a pretty good strategy, which rules out the chance of taking the queen, when you don’t want to.
If there is “so many bees, I think I’ll be lucky to spot her”, to me that’s a good indication that it’s time to split the colony.
For what it’s worth, I always take splits to new locations, far enough away so as to minimize bees returning to the parent hive. If that happens, it kind of defeats the purpose of doing the split. Plus it can leave the brood vulnerable to hive beetle strike, with only nurse bees to guard it.
Thanks Jeff
I completed the split yesterday. I was keen to get going as a friend delayed spitting his hive, planning to do it a week later only to find the bees had already decided to swarm and he missed it. I took 5 frames of uncapped/ capped brood and replaced them with stickies. I tried to find the queen with one pass of all frames but it was alway going to be luck if i spotted her. I’ll check the hive next week and see how successful i’ve been.
You’ll either find emergency queen cells or new eggs. If it’s the latter, you should expect to find emergency queen cells in the parent hive.
Five frames with bees is a decent sized split, which I often do. I find that I need to split them again after the queen cells are made, on account that sometimes the bees decide to swarm with the first virgin to emerge, especially at home here, now that I’ve got 3 new neighbors next door, instead of one. A developer bought the property, demolished a beautiful home, before building 3 town houses.
The beauty of splitting again means that you get 2 chances of getting a successfully mated queen. I’ll even go as far as saying that you can even divide it 3 ways, which I’ve done successfully.