This post will be updated once the queens that I am making are mated. What does that mean? Keep reading to figure out, If you are seeing this I having gotten to updating or there is not update yet.
April is a time when the bees are ramping up production and growing their population (within the hive). If let alone they will swarm towards the end of April/ beginning of May. May, June and July they will be making honey. A beekeeper wants to prevent swarming because than those will be bees lost into the trees! The more bees that stay in the hive the better. One-way HarBee is doing this is splitting the hives and making nucleus colonies.
Splitting is done by removing frames of brood and placing a queen cell onto the frame putting both into a different box. Queen cells can be made or purchased (how that is done is beyond the scope of this post). So now, you have just made a 2nd hive and ‘weakened’ the strong hive that would have otherwise swarmed. The queen will emerge in 1 or 2 days and mate. Once mated she will start laying eggs and now you have 2 hive. It is kind of like “artificial swarming”. This split can be used to boost a colony that is weak later this year or it can be sold.
It has also bees an early swarm season in New Jersey. I have already caught my first swarm of the year In Oradell. This is a swarm from someone else’s bees. You can never 100% stop the tendency to swarm, you can only reduce it. Swarm management is importation but swarm control can never be done.
Jargon –
- Swarm – Swarming is when half the bees leave the hive, with the old queen, to find a new place to take up shelter and continue a new colony. This leaves a new queen and the other half to continue the existing colony.
- Brood – Brood is referring to bees in the egg, larva and capped pupa stages of the bee’s life cycle. If you were to compare that to a butterfly it would be egg – caterpillar (the larva) – and cocoon stage (pupa stage). The pupa stage is also referred to as “capped brood”