Swarm prevention with a twist

Swarms & Bee Catching
1

I have 4 x 8 frame brood boxes. Normally I’m able to take out a frame or two of honey add a couple of new frames & hopefully no swarming. Did my 1st spring inspection on the weekend & In essence there is good brood on 7 plus frames in each box. So chance of swarming are high. I don’t want to create 4 new hives. One more I could handle. Do you recon I could take two frames from each (1 fully & 2 part full of brood), replace with new frames, then add the 8 frames into one new hive. At worst I’d only have 1 hive with a high risk of swarming

2

How good are you at finding your queens?

3

It’s still not easy but I’ve probably done it around 20 times

4

Well you have to be absolutely sure you know where they are to do what you want to do, and make sure you transfer some eggs to the queenless split so they can raise a new queen.

5

That is doable Bill but as @Stevo has said you need to be sure the queens remain in their own hives and that have also transferred some eggs over into the new hive, and also providing none of the hives has started any queen cells.
It is not possible to advise further as to some extent what you want to do is controlled by your local climate, your location is a blank so how about filling in your location or telling us, your town is best but a region is workable.
Cheers Bill

6

Thanks for the helpful advise by you & Stevo. The hives are in Stanmore (inner suburb of Sydney)

7

In Stanmore your warming up there with Spring weather so I wouldn’t sit on my hands if I were you Bill. Once the new hive has a laying queen it is very saleable on GumTree and they are a high demand item this year compared to previous Spring.
Cheers

8

Hi
An update. Took out 2 frames to give a boost to a hive & 6 frames 2 from each of the other 3 boxes into a new hive brood box. When I went to top up the weak hive it was devoid of bees so added all eight frames into the old hive. Very strong & hopefully they will create a new queen shortly. Did look at getting a new quality queen from my supplier but wont post as mail too unreliable at present. Fingers crossed.

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