On Sat, 18 May 1996, David. E. Goble wrote:
 
> Looking at your hive every six days is creating the situation
> for your bees to swarm, at the start of spring your whole hive
> should be inspected for swarming cells and the state of your
> hive, then if you keep placing more supers on this hive, you
> are allowing the bees to store nectar and return to you.
 
David may well be right, but as usual it's not as easy as that.
I'm interested in peoples thoughts:-
 
At the start of spring (usually late March/early April, but this
year we seem to be still still waiting) they will not normally
be trying to swarm. Swarming is usually late April through to
the end of June, but I have seen them at the end of July.
 
I don't know whether or not we can realistically use non-UK swarm
control measures -- the usual response here is that "It's all
right for them (US/CA/Aus/NZ etc.), they have far more space
for swarms to go without causing a problem -- in the UK, there
just isn't the space".
 
Let me describe my setup here and see what the views are. From
the stuff I read on bee-l, I do wonder if the UK practices
really are sensible. I guess I'm a fairly typical UK hobbyist
beekeeper, though maybe more inquisitive than many.
 
Bees are a hobby for me and it matters not to me whether I get
a honey crop (I started beekeeping for pollination), so I'm in a
position to throw away the UK rule book and start learning again.
 
The normal arrangement for a hive in the UK differs from many
other places. In Hampshire we also differ from much of the rest
of the UK. My hives are Langstroth plan but MD depth frames
(the Langstroth 'jumbo') and I use a single brood box, follower
board and QX. This is reckoned by most here to be the optimum
brood box for our climate, although a few think this brood box
is too *big*.
 
The consensus here is that we need that level of compactness
so that we get a crop in the supers and not in the brood nest
from where it's difficult to cleanly remove. The official honey
crop figures for the UK are around 50lb per colony per year,
which is about two supers full, though in the last few years,
most have done much better (around double?), so it may be we
are just not used to the warm weather we've had in the recent
past. If I'm not mistaken, we've just had the longest run of
high crops this century.
 
This year is *cold*. I don't think we've yet gone above 14C (60F)
and at the moment it's about 10C (50F), raining and blowing a
gale (literally). However, all of our colonies except one has
already been spilt. Several people have bees trying to swarm
whilst not even using the supers. Maybe that's due to those QXs.
 
I try to look at our bees every weekend, but the changeable
weather makes the interval variable. If they're making swarm
cells, normally I will cut them out when I first see them and If
they appear again, I will artificially swarm the colony.  If I
get desperate for equipment, I'll remove the queen and all cells
but one. This is not a nice procedure for either the bees or me.
 
I try to replace older queens in the autumn (fall), so I have
young new queens the following spring. This year's queens are
rarely ready before the middle of May, by which time it's too
late to requeen, IMHO.
 
I had a colony start this year in a double brood box and was
tempted to try operating them like that, however several much
more experienced beekeepers that I said not to try it as the
colony would be unmanageable and I would be lucky to get any
crop at all.  They also said the brood box would be very heavy
and I have to agree with that as I usually lift them alone.
 
Our climate is western maritime, I think rather like Vancouver
Island, cooler and less moderate than Cristchurch N.Z, warmer
and more moderate than Chicago. The population of England &
Wales is 370/km2, compared to NY state 140/km2, NZ 10/km2 and
CA/Aus around 1 or 2/km2.
 
PS -- I've just seen on the news that it's snowing on Dartmoor!
 
Best regards,
--
Gordon Scott   [log in to unmask]      [log in to unmask] (work)
The Basingstoke Beekeeper (newsletter)      [log in to unmask]
<A HREF="http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/apis">Embryo Home Page</A>
Beekeeper; Kendo 3rd Dan; Sometime sailor.  Hampshire, England.