Swarm prevention

Beekeeping - Basics
1

I am in some trouble.
The queen is in residence, but I have several queen cells on the middle of frames, plus swarm cells on the bottom edge. I have been advised to destroy every single queen cell to avoid a swarm, but as a new beekeeper I am uncertain about the process.

  1. Is this the correct step?
  2. Do I use smoke to move nurse bees away and then use my hive tool to … scrape off and/or smoosh the queen cells :frowning: ?
  3. Should I destroy the swarm cells?
  4. Am I out of my league? Maybe I should just let them swarm and raise a new queen.
    Thanks so much for your advice.
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2

At this point I think your best course of action is to take the queen and some frames of bees and make a split. You can then take down all but a couple of the best looking queen cells and let them go from there.

Taking down the cells may not keep them from swarming but making them feel as though they swarmed and leaving only a couple cells (one extra for insurance) maybe prevents multiple swarms.

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3

That is ancient advise, and will not prevent a swarm. They will swarm any way, and your hive could end up queenless… :thinking:

The answer to 2 and 3 is don’t do it, please.

You have another choice! Read these excellent articles and then consider a spilt as described on page 23 onwards of the second article (modified Snelgrove II):
https://wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/wbka-booklet-english-PDF.pdf

https://wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/An-Apiary-Guide-to-Swarm-Control-2nd-edition-updatedJan21.pdf

Hope that helps :blush:

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4

It’s times like this I’m so happy we have the forum so we can help rewrite the normal beekeeping practices for the better :blush:

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