Winter is not over here yet but already I have caught two swarms. My hives are not the donors but they have thrived over winter, very different to when I lived in the mountains. Best get into my hives tomorrow and do some swarm prevention…
Rob.
I Rob, I started swarm prevention last week. It looks like being a bumper season.
Just finished my brood inspection. My normally placid bees went thermo nuclear 
Just expanded the brood box as we could get some cold weather still. In a few weeks they are going to be split, the hive is too strong. Bees are like rugby teams, schoolkid teams are not too bad but the All Blacks are terrifying.
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Hi Rob, I did my cranky hive strategy yesterday. I was prepared for this hive while doing splits. I attempted this one last. It was full of bees. They were aggressive as I took the lid off, so I figured I’d have no chance of manipulating the brood frames, especially seeing as the frames hadn’t been removed for a few months.
First I removed the honey super & placed it on an empty box. Then I removed the brood box & placed it on 2 empty boxes (for extra height), several meters away. I put a new brood box (containing 3 frames of brood from another colony in the middle, flanked by foundation frames) on the original stand, followed by the QE & honey super. Then I proceeded to remove the brood frames, one by one, looking for the queen to kill. I found the queen to be elusive, so I shook each frame over another empty box further away. While doing this, the whole time the older cranky bees would fly back to the original site, leaving me alone. She wasn’t on any frames that I could see, so I shook all the bees out of the box. After a little while & cleaning the brood box a bit & 2 brood frames, I placed the brood box adjacent to the bee cluster, which drew them immediately in. After a little while, I found the queen on one of the frames, before I prepared the box to bring home with the other splits on the truck.
Naturally I wont use any of the brood to make new queens with,
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Similar method using the old divide and conquer method. The queen of the cranky hive has numbered days. Just waiting till the weather is a bit more suitable, another few weeks, and she will be pinched.
Hi Rob, today I was thinking that shaking all the bees out of the brood frames onto the ground might be a good part of the strategy to adopt every time. It quickly separates the older bees from the less aggressive nurse bees. We can still peruse each frame in case the queen is easy to spot. I took a while fiddling around with it yesterday. Now I think by getting on with it straight away, with that plan, the job can be done fairly quickly.
This colony wasn’t super hot, however I thought that manipulating the brood frames might have been a challenge, with it being so strong. It has been more aggressive than the others while taking honey, which is why I took the extra brood box.
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I am getting less compassionate to mine. They are hassling me every time I go outside so tomorrow may be D Day!
I have other nice/gentle hives and simply don’t need bees like this in an urban setting.
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An urban setting makes it hard, when it comes to angry bees. I’m lucky I have somewhere to take them. However I don’t tolerate them, on account that I don’t want their drones in the gene pool.
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I can take my extra splits out to my sons farm but you are right. This one will not be part of the genepool!
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I’m in Victoria, entering my 2nd year of beekeeping. My 2 hives were looking active so I opened them this week and they were pack out with a lot of honey(and possibly pre winter feeding sugar syrup) capped and uncapped. Temperates have been 2°c warmer than usual.
I added a brood box with beeswax foundation frames on each, hoping to avoided swarming. I’m going to do a full inspection later this week and see if they’re making Queen cells.
If they are packed out don’t just add a super, you have to expand the brood nest. Being honey bound is one of the major triggers of swarming.
Rob.
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Yep. I added a brood box.