I'm looking for advice, thoughts, and suggestions on how to optimize the
use of natural swarm cells.  I've had some degree of success with grafting
and other methods, but I'm not at all convinced that the trouble is worth
the effort in my case, and I suspect that my lack of expertise and the
compromises I make doing things independently on a small scale (like
grafting dry from larvae that *look* like the right age into homemade cups
that might be the right size) are yielding inferior results.  I'm also
inclined to think that the best quality queen is going to come from a cell
raised naturally under optimal conditions, not from a process managed by an
incompetent ignoramus like me.

So my thought is, why not crowd my breeder hives during swarm season,
encourage them to swarm, and then use the natural swarm cells.  But the
devil is in the details.  I'm not concerned about leading them to swarm; I
figure a strong, highly congested hive is going to raise cells.  (And if I
pick the hives that I want to make swarm, I figure I wouldn't especially be
selecting for swarm-inclined stock.)  The questions have to do with getting
them to raise swarm cells but not actually swarming.  Should I, for
instance, six days after "congesting" the hive add back a second brood
chamber and trap the queen in it above an excluder?  How many days from the
time they start raising cells can I bet on them not swarming?  Should I
transfer the cells as soon as they're capped to above an excluder on a
queenless hive?  Or should I transfer the cells directly to my 4-way mating
nucs and set the mating nucs above a double screen board on the breeder
colonies?

Thanks to you all,
Eric Brown
Wilkes Co., NC

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