Kirk Jones wrote


> We split the hive in two and leave the original queen in
> the original site with a couple of combs of bees and
> honey. The top story is set off and screened on a new
> pallet until the end of the day then moved to a new
> site.

Nice to read about Kirks system. I have been working with queen cells too.

My aim is to reduce the chance of swarming to 0 and change queens every year in my production hives. In Finland the season is quite short. Bees start flying around 15th of April and quit around middle of October. Willows bloom in the beginning of May. The honeyflow comes during  3 - 5 weeks and starts normally around 20th of June. Mainly in my area raspberries ( Rubus ideaus) and Fireweed.  Only in about 1 year out of 10 we get any surplus honey in May or August. So the season is short and there is no time to loose for swarmy  beehives.  Must sound quite hard for many of you, but the average crop is about 45 kg. My  worst average has been around 20 and best about 70 kg / overwintered hive.

You can see the production data 2001 - 2003 from the scale hives Http://www.hunaja.net/smlkoti/tilastot/Vaakapesatietoja/vaakapesa.htm
Beekeepers get this information olmost online during the summer. 1 - 3- day delay normally.

During couple past years I have been trying out a system that a few people have used here for a long time. The beginning of the honeyflow or 1 - 2 weeks before is the time when bees start swarming. When first preparations are seen in some apiaries, the queens are picked up from all hives. The queens are  placed with 1 or 2 brood frames in the box that is in the top of the beehive, and a excluder without entrance is placed below. The rest of the frames foundations or empty. The plastic excluders are perfect for this. The rest of the brood stays down, where it has been.

I run many of the hives with 2 - queen system in the spring. In these hives I make a split with the extra queen.

When the queen is up she can not swarm in case she wanted to, but very few  hives go this far because most of the brood is separated by 1 - 2 boxes from the queen. If virgin queens are grown, they mate and stay in the hive and start laying in the first box ( if you had another excluder between first and second box).

Last year I started to think that I should use this to my benefit and try to grow new queens to all hives. I made a trial with about 20 hives, and put a ripe queen cell to the first box at the same time when I transferred the queen to the uppermost box. I did get more than 80 % of cells to queens, which I think was not bad. I controlled the situation about 20 days after and removed all the old queens from the hives that showed a new one.

Finding the queens in the beginning of honeyfow is naturally quite a bit work, but I am filling the mini mating nucs for my queen breeding  at the same time. Its really easy  and fast to get young bees when the queen is separated to a new box. Also I don't have to find the queen to change her in the autunum.

This method also restricts queen laying for a few weeks, which is a benefit at this time of the year. The eggs laid at this time don't have time to develope to foragers before the end of the honeyflow, and they don't become winter bees either.


The coming year I am planning this as the main method for my honey producing colonies ( about 300).  I am not much worried about the maiting results as I dominate the area with my drones. Within my production area and 10 km from it exists only about 30 beehives of other beekeepers, and most of these have my queens in them. I sell queens with 50 % discount to my neighbours in order to keep the drones in control. They are quite happy about the deal !

I would like to hear comments about my plan.  Anyone out there with experience of same kind of system ?

Ari Seppälä
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