nuc with swarm cells

[marvin]

OK, here's a new one for me.  First some hive history:  The hive in question is starting its third year.  It was strong in fall, but by spring it weakened considerably, to the point where I had it down to one large brood box.  Pattern was bad, not a lot of bees.  I figured it was toast.  But as spring ground on, things turned around drastically.  So I figured I'd use it as split material.  So I gave it a medium box, and once it was full of eggs and brood, I took it off and a month later it had a nice queen and is laying strong.  And the large brood box was still cooking, so I figured I'd split the frames into two 5-frame nucs, pinch the old queen and try and get two new colonies out of it.  So when the time came to split, I couldn't find the queen.  So I waited another day, and still couldn't find her.  (as a side note, it was two days earlier that I got a small swarm (with a queen) in my garage.  That may or may not have anything to do with this).  So I made the splits and figured either no one had the queen, or one did and I'd take her out later.  So today I checked them out (this would be day 8)  and one split had two supercedure queen cells.  The other one also had two supercedure cells, plus 6 swarm cells scattered across the bases of 4 frames.  So I'm feeling a bit blessed and confused at the same time here:  I've been trying this year to up my hive numbers, so queen cells are a good thing to have around.  But have any of you ever had a very young nuc swarm?  Nucs this time of year are often packed to the gills with bees and honey, but I've never dealt with one swarming.   If I let it go as is, do I risk losing everything?  Should I just set up 4 nucs each of which gets one frame with a cell?  I'd appreciate hearing how you'd approach this.  

[Matt H]

How strong was the nuc? Did you provide any undrawn frames? A super strong nuc will swarm. It's also possible that they just overdid it with the queen cells. If it were me, I'd split it and give each nuc a frame of closed brood and an undrawn frame to work on.

[Paul Zelenski]

Nucs can definitely swarm. They are especially likely to do so if you split them out of a strong hive that was about to swarm and don't effectively spread them any thinner. If you take 5 frames from a hive that was ready to swarm and put them in a nuc, they feel just as crowded as they did in the large hive. If the frames you take also had swarm cells started, you really aren't doing anything to discourage them from swarming. It's also possible that a nuc makes queen cells that look like swarm cells within swarming. Most hives will make at least half a dozen queen cells when they go queenless. If they had any swarm cells started, you better believe they will finish them. If you want more queens, split them down further into nucs. If you just want the hives you've already created, remove all but the best 1-2 queen cells.

> On Jun 4, 2017, at 7:13 PM, Matt H <matthew...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> How strong was the nuc? Did you provide any undrawn frames? A super strong nuc will swarm. It's also possible that they just overdid it with the queen cells. If it were me, I'd split it and give each nuc a frame of closed brood and an undrawn frame to work on.
>

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[marvin]

I'd say they were strong nucs.  Two frames each of capped brood, one of uncapped/capped mixed and two of drawn comb, some with pollen, but not much honey.  I've had problems in the past with nucs getting honey bound, so I tried to give them room.  Apparently, not enough.  They filled them with nectar pretty fast.  Apparently foundation would've been better. 

I've been on top of this hive pretty thoroughly.  I wasn't sure what direction it was headed, so I've cracked into it more than I usually do.  While I would never have called it strong, it was definately on the upswing.  Still, I've seen no evidence of swarm cells, or supercedure. 

What gets me is I split the hive into two nucs pretty equally.  One looks like a normal nuc, the other like a swarm monster.   And they are sitting face to face on the same pallet. 

So I guess my real question has to do with suppressing the swarm response.  In a normal hive, its quite a chore, but doable.  If I split the nuc with the swarm cells in half, will I quell the swarm instinct?  That's kind of how I'm leaning right now. 

The lesson here is I was ready to cull this hive out.  It was old and in decline.  Yet it might give me up to four young colonies.  An argument for patience, I guess.

[Joseph Bessetti]

I would just say that splitting a hive may not always quench the urge to swarm.  There are numerous factors, in addition to crowding, that play into swarming.  Some of these factors are initiated weeks in advance of the queen actually laying eggs in swarm cells.  This may have been a situation in which the queen had "intended" to lay eggs in swarm cells, and your split just didn't dissuade her from doing so.  The hive had "intended" to swarm, and the queen-right half of the split continued with that plan.

The really curious part of this is why you ended up with both swarm cells and supersedure cells in what I presume was the queen-right split?  This is not common.  Perhaps the queen had laid eggs in queen cups before the split and you just didn't notice them?  And when you couldn't find the queen it was because the she had failed just a day or so earlier?  By chance you just put all the queen cups with eggs into the same split? 

I saw a somewhat similar situation last year.  There were started swarm cells in the hive, so I searched and searched for that queen to make a split, but never found her.  I tried again a couple days later and found supersedure cells in addition to the swarm cells.  My conclusion was that hive had initiated swarming but the queen failed just after laying in queen cups.  Then the queen failed, and because they were queenless they started supersedure cells.  I don't believe that the bees would be able to reason that making emergency queens was unnecessary since there were already some swarm cells started.

As a side note, in general I don't think it's good practice to let a colony with only 2-3 frames of brood raise queens.  This also is also in contrast to the standard practice of using strong queen cell starters and builders to raise queens.  We had very good conditions lately and these splits were probably strong enough to adequately feed a couple cells, so you'll probably end up with fine queens.  This is just something for new beekeepers to keep in mind.

Joe

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From: mad...@googlegroups.com <mad...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of marvin <marvin...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 4, 2017 5:56 PM
To: madbees
Subject: [madbees] nuc with swarm cells

 

OK, here's a new one for me.  First some hive history:  The hive in question is starting its third year.  It was strong in fall, but by spring it weakened considerably, to the point where I had it down to one large brood box.  Pattern was bad, not a lot of bees.  I figured it was toast.  But as spring ground on, things turned around drastically.  So I figured I'd use it as split material.  So I gave it a medium box, and once it was full of eggs and brood, I took it off and a month later it had a nice queen and is laying strong.  And the large brood box was still cooking, so I figured I'd split the frames into two 5-frame nucs, pinch the old queen and try and get two new colonies out of it.  So when the time came to split, I couldn't find the queen.  So I waited another day, and still couldn't find her.  (as a side note, it was two days earlier that I got a small swarm (with a queen) in my garage.  That may or may not have anything to do with this).  So I made the splits and figured either no one had the queen, or one did and I'd take her out later.  So today I checked them out (this would be day 8)  and one split had two supercedure queen cells.  The other one also had two supercedure cells, plus 6 swarm cells scattered across the bases of 4 frames.  So I'm feeling a bit blessed and confused at the same time here:  I've been trying this year to up my hive numbers, so queen cells are a good thing to have around.  But have any of you ever had a very young nuc swarm?  Nucs this time of year are often packed to the gills with bees and honey, but I've never dealt with one swarming.   If I let it go as is, do I risk losing everything?  Should I just set up 4 nucs each of which gets one frame with a cell?  I'd appreciate hearing how you'd approach this.  

--

[marvin]

Ya, I violated a lot of my rules on splitting this hive.  Most notably, only split a strong, healthy hive and cull hives that are only going to be problems later on.  This hive had all kinds of red flags early, but it's return to having a good brood production convinced me to mess with it.  It may pan out, or may not.  I think there's something to learn here, just that the lessons haven't all been written yet.  We'll see in the months ahead.

[Paul Zelenski]

If this hive is in its third year and the queen is petering out, it is fine for a split. The genetics are good if she was good the last two years. Ideally splitting it and letting both halves raise a new queen is a good use of a hive with a previously good, but old, queen. 

[marvin]

OK, so since I brought this topic up I think I should report on what happened and maybe folks will learn something of value.  To summarize, I had a hive going into its third year that survived winter but looked in questionable shape this spring.  It showed signs of recovering, so I took off one split, and then decided to later split the remaining brood box into two nucs and let them both raise new queens.  Those two nucs developed supercedure cells, and one also had swarm cells.  So what I did is re-arranged the two into three nucs; giving each queen cells and relieving some of the congestion by substituting undrawn foundation for honey frames.  Final result:  All three produced nice laying queens and all three stayed home.  No swarming.  I transferred them to large brood boxes yesterday and will now let them rip.  So four splits out of a declining hive seems like a pretty good payoff, but I have to admit I feel like I didn't read this situation correctly.  But here's what I think I learned from this:  Some of you may agree/disagree or have other insights.  I'd appreciate any other suggestions. 

1.  Nucs can swarm.  As others suggested, splitting alone doesn't necessarily quell the swarm urge.
2.  Don't assume that what you think is a weak hive won't swarm.  I focused so much on locating eggs when I made the splits that I missed primordial queen cells buried in the drone mess at the bottom of the frames.
3.  Beware of overpacking nucs.  The recommendation for a 5 frame nuc of two frames capped brood:1 frame eggs and larvae:1 frame honey:1 frame pollen may be a bit too crowded.  At the time of year we make nucs, the honey flow is adequate to get a nuc honey bound and congested.  It might be wiser to give a frame of foundation. 
4.  The recommendation to feed nucs is also probably unnecessary (in a normal year)
5.  Re-think peeking at nucs?  I put a question mark there.  I have a hard rule that I never go into a nuc for one month after formation so as not to damage/disrupt the process.  I only went in this time because the queen went missing.  Glad I did, but still not sure I'm going to change on this one. 
6.  Maybe nurse weak overwintering hives a bit more diligently?  I tend to cull weaklings, but 4 for 1 is hard to argue with.

I'll leave it there.  Any other tips anyone has on building a better nuc would be appreciated.  It's just too valuable a tool to not have in your arsenal.

[Matt H]

I think the key is understanding what is the goal of said nuc.  If it's to maintain a queen for later use, then yes, what you have listed below is way too strong.  If the goal is to create a nuc using a mated queen and sell it to a customer who will be hiving it soon after, then I think 2 closed brood frames, 1 open brood frame, 1 food frame, 1 empty drawn frame is fine.  

For queen rearing and maintenance (not one to sell to a customer), I typically do queen cell, 1 food frame, 1 closed brood frame, 1 drawn frame, and 2 undrawn frames.  It's a rather weak nuc, but strong enough to raise the queen and chug along without the risk of overcrowding.  I've found it can be risky to put open brood into a nuc if you're not willing to pack it full of bees.

Feeding nucs usually isn't necessary after mid/late May.  Before then I do put a pint jar of 1:1 on them.  The lid has only 2-3 1/16" holes in it so it limits how fast they can take it.

Weak hives...why is it weak?  Mites?  No honey? Few bees?  Bad queen? Myself and others here have overwintered 5-frame boxes 3-deep high (15 deep frames) with relatively good success rates. 

[Tim Aure]

One can also have nucs to raise this years swarm cells into queens, monitor & observe them for the better queens. Later this fall remove the mediocre queens and combine the resources with the better queened hives. Why just pinch the swarm cells? We all have various levels of hives if we have more than a single hive. Mike Palmer speaks of using his poor hives as resources to requeen with.

It's probably wise to remove the original queen from the big hive to a nuc so the swarm tendency is removed with this 'artificial' swarm. In the meantime the strong hive won't have to feed the sealed brood while the new queen is being raised and the bees will put all their effort to make honey as Mel Disselkoen says

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