Fwd: ACBA Speaker - January 18 Wally Shaw on Swarm Control

[Gerald Przybylski]

This may be a little over your head, but I hope it will be interesting anyway

This Tuesday January 18 7:30 PM Special ACBA Zoom Program Zoom Login: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/3254895194?pwd=QlE2L3RJSUZBM1BkQTYyU1VhZzR4UT09

January 18, 2022 7:30pm program Wally Shaw Beekeeper in Anglesey Wales for 34 years. Retired research ecologist, and author of a number of articles in the UK's BeeCraft- Magazine, and guides on the Welsh Beekeeper Association website, and the 200 page paperback Swarming-Biology and Control.            £25 The Role of Swarm Control in Beekeeping An overview of swarm control based on 34 years of observation, study, and fine tuning; then, a wide open Q&A on swarm control and any other bee management topics.  Reading to prep yourself for the Program: https://wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/An-Apiary-Guide-to-Swarm-Control-2nd-edition-updatedJan21.pdf https://wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/wbka-booklet-english-PDF.pdf There are Queen Cells in my hive. What do I do https://wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/web-Simple-Methods-of-Making-Increase-2nd-edition.pdf https://wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/a006howtodealwithacolonythatisre-queeningitself.pdf The swarm book includes substantial content from the links above, plus additional material.  (If there is enough interest in getting copies of the book,  ACBA may import copies from the UK publisher to resell at cost to club members. If interested, email V...@alamedabees.org to be added to the list.)

Tuesday February 8, 7:30 pm Business meeting 8:00 pm Program Jerry Przybylski Ten year ACBA member; coordinator of the swarm-hotline volunteer team, swarm chaser. Swarm Collecting, the ACBA Swarm-List,  and Serving our Community 2021 had about 800 calls to the ACBA swarm hotline, of which over 300 were reports of swarms,  the most calls ever. We serve the community by relocating those swarms to our yards. Win for the bees. Win for the neighborhood. Win for the beekeeper. Learn how to get hooked in,  and some best-practices.

For more information visit the ACBA Speaker Schedule web page
Renew your membership in ACBA and any other clubs you belong to

[Susan Donahue]

I’m down.  My brother had emergency surgery Tuesday night and is like himself now, only with an additional 4 inch scar on the side of his head

Sue

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[gmau...@earthlink.net]

Walley and Jerry... Thank you very much for putting on a great program last night.  The few number of questions asked during the Q&A session was surprising given, what I felt was, the complexity of the subject.  Either everyone fully followed and comprehended everything presented or, as Jerry eluded to in his presentation announcement, it was a little over peoples' heads.  I suspect it may be the latter.  In either case, I want to thank you especially for putting up with my questions and my often intolerable habit of over anxiously interrupting when I feel the answer(s) being given are drifting from answering the question that I thought I had asked but later realize that it should (or could) have been reworded.

Last night one (or both) of you mentioned that Francois Huber had discovered Bee Space.  I questioned this but chose to defer to the more experienced at the time.  Still, I was a bit confused having just recently lead a group through a NUC design/building exercise... which involved reviewing dimensions to assure compliance with Bee Space.  There was an opportunity make one of the design groups email interchanges informative so I Googled "Bee Space" to find that Langstroth discovered Bee Space in 1851 and originally patented his hive in 1852 *1.  Francois Huber did develop the movable frame hive in the 18th century but  "... Huber's hive was not widely adopted" *2.

Thank you again...  Greg

*1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langstroth_hive

*2 - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-secret-to-the-modern-beehive-is-a-one-centimeter-air-gap-4427011/

[Phil Stob]

Indeed, great program.   Its one that I will hit the rewind button a few times to catch all of the nuance of what Wally was saying.   

As for bee space, the debate rages.    While it is often attributed to Langstroth, he never really specified the space, or referred to it directly, or so the stories go.  It was just implied in his work.   But that's the debate.  We can't ask Huber or Langstroth now, but you can pretty much get the same answer by simply measuring a wild hive. Which is likely why they didn't bother claiming to discover what the bees already were doing, and every beekeeper before them knew it instinctively,  but didn't bother putting a number to it because before a moveable frame, it didn't matter.   Even today, some frame spacing is anywhere from 1.25" to 1.5" .   Some beekeepers trim down their stock frames a tad.  Plans for top bars vary.  Bees are adaptable. 

But the basic concept of bee space still rings true.   Less than bee space, and the bees (likely) won't fill it up, and greater than bee space, and they will add more comb (when they build comb).   But then bees will always prove us all wrong and do as they see fit, for reasons we can't always understand.  

http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/bsp.html

https://www.urbanbeeprojectaustralia.com/blog/2020/8/26/the-langstroth-bee-hive

Cheers, Phil 

[Catherine Edwards]

I had a question, but waited too long to ask it. Does anyone know why one should move the queen back to the parent colony rather than leaving her where she is while the parent colony raises the emergency cells? Is it so that the artificial swarm won't swarm?

Catherine Edwards

(510)421-7206

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[MLuskin]

I got confused at the end when there was one too many manipulations to keep track of for me.  If someone would be willing to tackle making a list of the steps, I think several people would appreciate it. I questioned whether the process could be simplified. 

Merry Luskin 

On Jan 20, 2022, at 9:48 AM, Catherine Edwards <catherine...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Gerald Przybylski]

In the announcement I sent out
there was a list of links to articles on the Welsh Beekeeper Assn website.
I think it's in the 'i have swarm cells, what do I do now' article.
The articles include the colour coded diagrams. (he uses 12-frame boxes, so you have to adjust)
I hope that helps.

If you can't find the email announcement, visit the publications page of the WBKA.COM website.

Cheers

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-- 
While COVID-19 is with us, maintain social distance!
Comply with State Mandated shelter-in-place guidelines for gloves and masks.
Don't go out in public if even a little bit ill, even to catch a swarm. (Risk of spreading virus)
Swarm chasing SOLO is preferred for now.

[Christine Hyung-Oak Lee]

Hi! Is there a link to the video that I can watch? Had a personal thing that prevented me from watching it live.

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[Gerald Przybylski]

Our AV team has access to the raw file, and will process it for ACBA's YouTube channel.
(our website's members-tab has a page with quick links to the videos that have been processed)

Whoever says "Yes" to processing this one is a champ for taking on a video that's over three hours long.

We got the "Beta" version.  Wally says the next presentation will be shorter.
In the Beta we get the background and context that won't make the final version.
I'm OK with that if it makes us better beekeepers.

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[gmau...@earthlink.net]

Sue... Your question the other night about shaking queen cells was good but in the situation where Walley is moving an entire hive (vs. individual frames) shaking queen cells enough to kill them would be VERY difficult...  Greg

[gmau...@earthlink.net]

Catherine... my understanding of what Walley has been/is doing is in short:

1)  Relocate a hive that is about to swarm.   Place a couple of frames (containing young larvae) out of the relocated hive into an otherwise empty hive located in the vacated space,.

2)  Nine or ten days later

   a)  remove the frames with emergency cells from the "empty" hive and place them in the relocated hive.

   b)  remove the queen from the relocated hive and introduce her to the "empty" hive that has been cleared of emergency cells

If I have it  right... after step 1)... the hive that was about to swarm can no longer swarm because all the flying bees have gone to the hive left in the vacated space.  I believe that during the 9 or 10 days, the hive that was about to swarm but can no longer... switches from a swarming to a supersedure situation (the swarm cells are either torn down by the workers or killed by the queen).  After the 9 or 10 days, the "empty" hive is in the process of emergency requeening.  Removing the frames with emergency cells and introducing the queen makes the hive think that the emergency requeening is complete.  The frames with supersedure cells that was removed from the "empty" hive and put in the "swarm" hive gives the original "swarm" hive a 9 or 10 day jump on emergency requeening.

A short recap....  The swarming desire is converted to a supersedure situation by removing all the (flying) bees that are needed to effect a swarm.  After the 9 or 10 days, the original "swarm" hive is in several days into a emergency requeening situation and the "empty" hive in the original location (that which was vacated by the "swarm" hive) has only the queen and flying bees... (exactly that of a swarm!).

I think this makes sense... What do you think?... Greg

[Catherine Edwards]

Greg, thanks for the recap. I did follow that (though remembering it without a crib sheet is a different story). I went through the raw file Jerry sent out where Wally mentions that returning the queen may not be crucial. I am thinking, though, that she might be needed there to repopulate that hive in a timely manner.

Catherine

Catherine Edwards

(510)421-7206

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[gmau...@earthlink.net]

Catherine... I agree that it was a bit difficult to follow... especially considering it was all new (at least to me) information.  In retrospect, preparing beforehand by studying the links that Jerry provided probably would have gone a long way toward getting a jump on understanding.  While returning the queen to the "empty" hive with all the flying bees may not be necessary, it DOES make for something that is about as close to a colony that has swarmed that one can reasonably get.  The "artificial swarms" that I had studied prior to this had been the queen with nurse (vs. flying) bees.

Sorry if I let my blind enthusiasm dominate the Q&A to where you weren't allowed a chance to ask your questions.  It's something I need to work on...  Greg

[Catherine Edwards]

Thanks, Greg. Makes sense. 

It was your question that stimulated mine. You didn't take too much time, so please don't feel bad. 

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[Sung Han Lee]

Thank Greg.

It took several repeated reading to understand the process at least for me.

It makes sense according to your explanation.  

Now I am going to try it the same procedure as I have hives are expressing to swarm. 

1. Through the process it forces the colony to make emergency queen cells. 

One thing thou I never liked emergency queen cells. They are tends to be smaller than regular supercedured cells or swarm cells. Sometimes are not but most of the cases I have seen. I mean they are making new queen(s). That is only down side for me. 

2. Or wait until they started making swarm cells. These are usually good size queen cells. But I really have to watch very closely otherwise if I miss a day or two, they have swarmed. Just flip the box check the bottom side of the frames. Or I just mark the frame(s) as they started to make cup(s). On regular basis I check them once a week anyway. 

It is an extra work at least. I think one trial may not give me good results and understanding. Through out the season I will try regular splits and Wally's method. 

Let's  see how it flies.

Sung Lee the bee charmer 

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[Gerald Przybylski]

On 1/22/22 9:41 AM, Sung Han Lee wrote:

Thank Greg.

It took several repeated reading to understand the process at least for me.

It makes sense according to your explanation.  

Now I am going to try it the same procedure as I have hives are expressing to swarm. 

1. Through the process it forces the colony to make emergency queen cells. 

One thing thou I never liked emergency queen cells. They are tends to be smaller than regular supercedured cells or swarm cells. Sometimes are not but most of the cases I have seen. I mean they are making new queen(s). That is only down side for me.

Wally mentions Emergency Queen Cell Size in the book too.
He said, I believe, that emergency queen cell volumes have been measured and found to be pretty
much the same as swarm or supersedure cell volumes.
The speculation was made that when emergency queen cells are small it may just be
because the colony was starving anyway. 
Yup. The conventional wisdom is that the best queen cells are swarm queen cells because
they were made at a time of the colony's choosing by a huge complement of young house bees,
so they are very well fed.
What the book and the program mentioned is that the bees actively (carefully?)
select between the available queens.
They fix the fight so the best one wins the fight, if there is a fight.
The colony's definition of best isn't clear to us intruders.

2. Or wait until they started making swarm cells. These are usually good size queen cells. But I really have to watch very closely otherwise if I miss a day or two, they have swarmed. Just flip the box check the bottom side of the frames. Or I just mark the frame(s) as they started to make cup(s). On regular basis I check them once a week anyway.

According to Wally's strategy for dealing with colonies with swarm cells (what Phil calls Wally's-Way)
weekly hive checks allow the just-in-time discovery and reaction to swarm cells.
You check weekly, right, Sung?
You can artificially swarm whenever you like,  or you can use Wally's-way when you have to
deal with a hive full of uncapped queen cells.

Wally mentioned that queen cells don't attract much attention from the colony until the last
three days or so before they emerge.
I've heard varying numbers for the timing of when the queen and swarm leave.
The shortest I've heard is 'just after swarm cells are capped.'  So a colony could swarm 4 or 5 days after inspection.
If we can rely on the swarm delaying until  'about the time the colony starts paying attention to queen cells,'
then the weekly inspections should be completely safe. That's 5 days after capping.

Wally claim high success with the method among his colonies and
for those beeks in Wales who he's trained to use it.
His bees are Black bees, though, since they do better in his climate.  With your many hives,
you're in a good position to verify it works in our climate with our mostly Italian bees.
Maybe it's a Master Beekeeper kind of project documenting success/failure and writing an article about it.
Dewey Caron said he's writing a splitting article for ABJ.  (He was an attendee last Tuesday)

It is an extra work at least. I think one trial may not give me good results and understanding. Through out the season I will try regular splits and Wally's method. 

Let's  see how it flies.

I hope all goes well, and that we get some more rain too.
A nice rain storm every week for the next couple of months would be nice.
That's my 2¢

[gmau...@earthlink.net]

Sung...  It's reassuring to see that I wasn't the only one who had difficulty following Walleys' presentation of his process.  My initial impression of him not explaining it simply and/or clearly was that it was a ploy to sell his new book.  That feeling was bolstered by Jerry cutting me off once to pitch that the club was buying a case of Walley's books.   However, Walley kept on freely giving more and more tantalizing tidbits of information which caused me to question the motive behind the ambiguity.  I now believe that Walley's ambiguity was unintentional and merely the result of it being a relatively recent discovery/development/revelation.  It's easy in those situations to be overly burdened by the sum of the information and experience that got you to where you are.  Jerry even suggested to Walley, that he try to shorten it to an hour.  I agree... trying to maintain a state of attention for two hours is more than most mere mortals can can do...  Greg

[Gerald Przybylski]

My apologies for interrupting you, Greg,  during your Q&A with Wally at the end of the program.
I think I saw in a recent email that you mentioned that you understood the method better when you read some of the
links after the meeting.  (The https://wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/An-Apiary-Guide-to-Swarm-Control-2nd-edition-updatedJan21.pdf link, perhaps, around Page 24)

my humble opinion is that to do the proactive and reactive swarm control,
you can get what you need from the wbka.com-publications articles (the items in the right column).
You can print the colour pages out on a colour printer to take advantage of the helpful colour-code.
You can even "bind" them with a stapler. 
You can copy them to your tablet computer and take them to the bee-yard with you.
So you can get along without the book. Wally mentioned as much.

I think it's nice to have the related material all in one place, the book.  Last night I counted 20 copies spoken for.

The show ran 3:15, by the way because, Wally said he thought we would be interested in the background.
The background, imo, helps us think like, or think ahead of, the bees.
It helps us when diagnosing things going wrong,
or choosing which branch/option to take,
like steps we absolutely have to do, or steps we can skip in certain cases. 
All that being said, I think there are still a few fuzzy areas, and corner cases we may bump into.
Wally's 3-hour program may translate to a week worth of college or university level beekeeping-course classes.
That's just the way I saw it.
Others will feel the way they feel about it.

If you think he wants to sell the book for the income, I kinda doubt it.  He declined the honorarium 14 months ago.

Cheers,
Jerry

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[gmau...@earthlink.net]

I believe I've found a GREAT application for Walley's Swarm Prevention technique...  I'll call it "Apiary Spring Cleaning".  I've been wanting to tidy up my apiary by moving a swarm since it was baited it in last spring/summer.  However, the less-than-two-feet/greater-than-two-miles rule has been enough of a barrier to prevent if from happening.  It just dawned on me that I could use  Walley's technique to "move" the hive within my yard (MORE-than-two-feet/LESS-than-two-miles) and in the process preemptively prevent swarming.  The catch box with brood frames would be allowed to emergency requeen itself (or one could swap the queen with the emergency cells if they want a refresh on their current queen) and rehomed after requeening.  This isn't a whole lot different a walk-away-split and making sure that the queen is in the split portion that is NOT in the original hive location.

[gmau...@earthlink.net]

Jerry... Your apology is accepted.  It may have been within an off-Google-Groups email exchange that I mentioned being disappointed at myself not having studied the links beforehand.  You did everything you could as the coordinator to have the audience prepare themselves.  However, I think it pretty standard that a good portion of the audience expects to pick up stuff on the fly. 

You misinterpreted what I wrote about selling books.  I said that my INITIAL impression was that the ambiguity in the presentation was to sell books... that this impression was bolstered when my questions to clarify were interrupted by you announcing that you had books to sell... and that my CURRENT impression is that Wally is still working on how to present it succinctly.

3:15... wow!  THAT is a VERY long time to expect people to remain at attention.  I wonder if it might make for a better presentation, to present the results with "seeming" holes,  let the audience work to fill the holes in the Q&A, and answer the audience with the background as support data.  Not many people (and I include myself in that group) can appreciate reams of data being thrown at them.  I believe that giving them the data they deem necessary to feel fulfilled is better simply because it is interactive and they are getting what THEY ask for (or believe they need) vs. being force fed a whole bunch of stuff that either they already know or have to sift through to figure out what they need to know...  Greg