-----Original Message-----
From: Aaron Morris <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: December 23, 1998 9:59 AM
Subject: Snelgrove for swarm control, an update
 
 
I received in private E-Mail a query regarding my results employing
Snelgrove's technique for swarm control.  Having never posted my results
to BEE-L, I offer the following tidbits as my Yuletide Offering to all
my friends and beekeeping chums along with my sincere wishes for a
joyous Christmas and Happiest of New Years!
 
For those who missed the initial description of Snelgrove's techniques,
send a single line of mail to:
        [log in to unmask]
that reads:
        GETPOST BEE-L 17749
 
"Yes, I tested quite heavily Snelgrove's methods this season.  I've made
no attempts to summarize my results and I don't have my notes with me at
the moment, so what I'm writing is off the top of my head.
 
Overall I would say I had great results, which is to say I was able to
control swarming in all hives on which I used Snelgrove's methodology.
I experimented with at least 40 colonies none of which cast swarms.
 
However, this success in swarm control has to be weighed against the
burden of implementing the control.  Initially setting up the
arrangement (moving/segregating frames of sealed brood into the box
below, open brood and eggs above) was new and exciting and I enjoyed the
whole process.  Queen excluder above the bottom brood chamber, honey
supers, Snelgrove Board (SgB) and top brood chamber created quite a tall
hive!  This is where the methodology became tedious.  You can imagine
the task required to examine the bottom brood chamber or even just
evaluating the honey supers.  Any time you want to look into the colony
below you must first remove the top colony.  Further exacerbating this
task is the fact that the SgB is not attached to the top colony, so it
became problematic with bees on both top and bottom of the SgB when I
removed it working my way down the hive.  Attaching the SgB to the top
colony would ease this problem.
 
Now, Snelgrove's method effectively sets up a two queen colony and you
have all the management headaches associated with them - populous
hives requiring MANY honey supers and lots of over the head lifting.
Some hives required ladders to work and schlepping bees while
precariously perched atop a 6 foot step ladder is flirting with
disaster.  Fortunately none struck.
 
Those problems aside, I ran into other snags that weren't anticipated or
elucidated in Snelgrove's writings.  Initially things went quite well,
all of the top hives which were queenless (the original queen goes to
the colony below) started raising new queens or accepted queens procured
from breeders.  Most colonies readily accepted introduced queens, which
is what you'd expect.  The top colony ends up with mostly young bees and
nurse bees, as the field bees return to the original hive entrance.
However, there were a few of the top colonies that simply refused to
accept introduced queens.  Some of these I tried two or three new queen
introductions, which amounted to a lot of wasted money and work on my
part and stress on that colony.  After prolonged queenlessness I had to
recombined the top colony with the original colony.  I quickly learned
that if the top colony did not accept the introduced queen that rather
than cutting out established queen cells and trying another introduction
the colony should be left alone to raise its own queen.  In retrospect
that should have been obvious since by the time I determined an
introduced queen was rejected there is no chance of that colony raising
a new queen because the eggs have all hatched and the larvae are too
old.  The lesson here is bees know more about bees than do beekeepers.
 
Next snag: Not all the top colonies left alone to raise their own queen
ended up with a successfully mated new queen.  This was minimal, two or
three, but again the net result was recombining the top with the bottom,
lots of wasted energy on my part and stress on those bees.  I would not
chalk this up to a problem with Snelgrove's methods per se, it's more of
a general problem facing queen breeders.  Not all mating nucs are
successful, plain and simple, it comes with the territory.
 
Another problem I ran into but did not expect from Snelgrove's writings
came when I started employing the many entrances/exits in the SgB used
to transfer bees from the top colony to the bottom.  Snelgrove claimed
that the bees will readily transfer between the colonies because they
are familiar with each other's smells due to the double screen
separating the two colonies.  As Porgy sang, "It's ain't necessarily
so!".  Some bees transferred readily between colonies, some did not (or
at least this is how I interpreted some of my results).  Some of my
bottom colonies ended up queenless soon after I opened/closed the
different doors combining the top colony field force with the bottom
colony.  I cannot say with assuredness but I suspect that sometimes the
bottom colony's queen was assassinated by the foreign bees.  This may
not be the case, the bottom queen could have met a different demise.
But I had enough of the bottom queens disappear that I suspect the bees
may not mix as freely and amicably as Snelgrove led one to believe.
 
The final problem I ran into which Snelgrove surely noticed but did not
include in his writings was with pollen in my honey supers.  When I
switched the doors to move field bees from the top colony to the bottom
I witnessed more than many top field bees bringing their pollen loads
back into the bottom honey supers.  Bees tend to store pollen near
brood, and the top colony field bees stored pollen near their former
brood chamber.  This was not a big deal for my extracting supers
although I now have a lot of pollen plugs in what had been heretofore
strictly honey combs.  However, Snelgrove claimed that his methods can
be ideal for comb honey production and in fact recommends it!  I had to
cull nearly half of my comb honey harvest due to the pollen storage
problem.  I have literally hundreds of Ross Rounds that are not fit for
market because the top colony field bees stored pollen in the comb honey
supers.  To me this is a significant problem.
 
So, did Snelgrove's methods control swarming?  Yes, without a doubt.
However I wonder if this might be accomplished in other ways.
Snelgrove's methods actually allow a hive to swarm while keeping the
entire population intact, a unique management technique.  When it goes
right, the resulting colonies are gangbuster hives which can out produce
other hives two and even threefold!  However I am not convinced that the
energy expended to successfully employ his technique is proportional to
the increased yield.  If colonies are few and time and energy are
bountiful, I recommend Snelgrove's technique.  On the other hand, a
beekeeper can realize like harvests expending less energy with a few
more hives having lower average yields.  Swarming can be controlled by
making splits - populations are not kept intact, split hives will
produce less, but in the long run return on your investment (time and
energy) is greater.
 
I think in the future I will use my Snelgrove Boards to make my splits
atop established hives to control swarming, but I will move the splits
off the established hive to stand alone rather than utilizing the split
to enhance the original hive.  I can then use these splits as needs
dictate during the season without enduring the unforeseen problems I
encountered following Snelgrove's writings.  As they saying goes, if it
sounds too good to be true then perhaps it is.
 
Thanks for asking for an update, it's nice to see folks perusing and
using the BEE-L archives!"
 
Sincerely,
Aaron Morris