George Imirie's PINK PAGES
April 2002
Supering, Swarming, and Splitting
In any part of Maryland, during April the beekeeper's mind is focused on a single
thought - honey production! Unfortunately, although they have known about installing
supers in April for months in advance, their supers are STILL NOT prepared for installing
on the bee colonies; and particularly this year of 2002 when we have had almost the
warmest winter on record and things are blooming 3-4 weeks in advance of their normal
blooming time. My bees are so strong in population that I had to install one super on each
colony on March 15th to free up brood chamber space. Writing about an UNUSUAL time
will only confuse you, so my remarks are applicable to a NORMAL SEASON.
Far too many beekeepers install their supers LATER than they should, or don't
install enough supers, or don't install them ALL AT ONE TIME, or install more than one
super of foundation. ANY ONE of the aforementioned installation errors result in less
honey production or swarming, or both; and it is always the BEES that get blamed, when
about 90% of the time, it is the fault of the beekeeper in his failure to install supers at
the proper time, install enough supers, and installing frames of foundation as if they
were frames of drawn comb.
Over 90% of our honey is made during the months of April and predominantly May,
and maybe a smidgen more the first 10 days of June, unless there is some very special
circumstance in your particular area. Assuming that some beekeepers have adequate
frames of DRAWN COMB and are NOT using foundation, the following procedures are my
strong recommendation: Install the first super on April 1st directly on top of the upper
brood chamber with NO queen excluder under it. Examine it a week or 2 weeks later and
if bees are actively working on the frames in that super evidenced by seeing nectar in
several frames or eggs and larvae, the super is BAITED and you now install the queen
excluder under that super (making sure the queen is down below). Bees will not hesitate
to come through the excluder if the super is BAITED with fresh incoming nectar or open
brood. Sometime between April 15th and April 25th, install an Imirie Shim on top of
this super, and install at least 2 more supers of drawn comb over the Shim (I prefer
4 more making a total of 5 plus a second Imirie Shim). Dr. Tom Rinderer, of the Baton
Rouge Bee Lab, PROVED that installation of supers ALL AT ONE TIME made the bees bring
in more nectar than installing supers one at a time on different dates. The Imirie Shim
is used to give the foraging bees quick ingress and egress to the supers without "fighting
their way to and from the congested brood chamber area" in order to use the front bottom
board entrance. Back in the "old days", some beekeepers used to drill "entrance" holes in
the front of supers, but I hate holes in my hive bodies so I started building my own Shims
about 40 years ago. About 5 years ago, Brushy Mountain Bee Supply asked my permission
to build Imirie Shims for sale to other beekeepers, and Steve Forrest says he sells a
"bundle"of them now. By the way, bees will NOT build burr comb in the empty space of
Imirie Shim if there is enough empty super space present. "Smart bees" don't waste
time and energy building burr comb when empty comb space is present.
If you do NOT have DRAWN COMB and have to use frames of foundation, that is a
whole "new ball game" that must be handled completely different. If you try to treat
foundation as if it were drawn comb or if you try to mix frames of foundation with
frames of drawn comb, WHAT A HORRIBLE MESS THE BEES WILL MAKE OF THIS, and you
will have to destroy it, put in new foundation, and start over again. When trying to get
bees to build foundation into drawn comb, there MUST POSITIVELY be a strong nectar
flow in progress, and there MUST be all 10 frames (never 9) of foundation in a super
tightly packed together endbar-to-endbar with any empty space left near the side walls
of the super. You can only draw ONE super of foundation at a time, NEVER 2 or 3 or 4.
You install just ONE super of 10 tightly packed frames of foundation, when the 6 center
frames are close to fully drawn and partially filled with nectar, move them towards the
outer walls of the super and put the undrawn foundation frames in the center. When the
center frames are about 60%-70% drawn and contain nectar, now is the time to add the
2nd super of 10 frames of foundation and do to this 2nd super exactly what you did with
the 1st super, and the same for the 3rd or 4th super. Maybe now, you understand why I
refer to frames of drawn comb as "a beekeeper's MOST VALUABLE POSSESSION", because
it is an exhausting process to get properly drawn comb from foundation! So don't let the
wax moths destroy it after it is extracted, by protecting it with para-dichloro-benzene
until you need it next year.
Of course, you are not going to get very much honey anyhow if you have been lazy
and not used the accepted swarm prevention techniques which are primarily reversing
of brood chamber positions several times starting back in February to provide the queen
with constant new empty laying space, and secondly, having a real young queen (less
than a year old) present. Good bee management is applying prevention methods BEFORE
the bees program swarming. If you have not reversed the brood chambers and/or if your
queen is over a year old, you don't have much choice of methods of swarm prevention.
For many years, people have clipped off a wing of the queen so she can't fly, or opened
a colony as often as every 8 days, examined all the brood frames, and cut out every
queen cell that could be found. Both of these procedures failed quite often and the
bees flew away in a swarm, because the bees killed the clipped queen and swarmed
with the virgin queen just a few days after she emerged from the queen cell, and in the
procedure of cutting out queen cells, the beekeeper accidentally missed one cell.
However, with luck, "you can have your cake and eat it too" by splitting the colony,
temporarily making two colonies for a couple of months, then killing off the old queen
and uniting the two colonies into one headed by the new queen you got to make the split.
Not only will this probably prevent swarming, you probably will save the great majority
of the honey crop that you had hoped for, and you have either increased your colonies
from one to two, or you have requeened the original colony with a young queen if you
decide to unite the two colonies into one colony. How do you make a split that does all
this? Keep in mind TWO things: First, bees are unlikely to swarm if the brood chamber
is NOT congested and the queen has ample laying space; and second, bees under the age
of about 19 days are house bees and do NOT go out foraging for nectar. Select a day with
nice warm weather, little wind, and make the split between the hours of about 10 AM
and 3 PM (when most of the foraging bees are out foraging). Find the old queen and set
the frame she is on in some separate hive body off by itself. Now, you are free to do
anything you want with the remaining 19 deep brood frames or 29 medium brood frames
if you have ALL medium hive bodies like I have. Move 4-6 frames of OPEN brood with all
the covering bees, and at least1 frame of capped brood with covering bees to a new hive
body and add drawn comb frames to total 9 frames, and set this new colony next door to
the parent colony if you plan to reunite the two colonies 2-3 months later, or any
distance away if you plan on colony increase. Make sure that you cut away any queen
cells that are on any of these 9 frames. Carefully inspect the remaining frames of the
original colony and cut out all the queen cells you can find. Replace the frames that you
took away with empty frames of drawn comb and add the frame with the old queen on it
and place all of these in the lower brood chamber. You have now stopped the original
colony from swarming and have not removed any foraging aged bees that will make your
honey crop. Go in your house and get the new MARKED queen that you just got plus a
gallon feeder of 1:1 sugar syrup, and place that queen introduction cage in the center rear
of the new hive with the gallon feeder jar over the inner cover hole, and add an entrance
reducer stick to the front entrance. Do NOT examine or disturb this new colony for at
least 3 days and better 5 days. Then, with little or no smoke, inspect to see if the queen
is out of the introduction cage, and if so, remove the cage and add a 10th frame of drawn
comb. Wait another 5-7 days and then carefully inspect that colony for eggs and/or
larvae which proves your new queen is alive and laying. Keep that 1:1 sugar syrup feed
going and add a second body of 10 frames of foundation in about 3-4 weeks.
Gosh! Wasn't that simple!
Before I end, it would be well to repeat some facts about swarming that a great
many beekeepers just don't seem to understand, but are very important that you know.
First, swarms just don't suddenly happen, but rather, the bees have programed and
planned to swarm for about 10-14 days in advance of the swarm happening. During
that 10-14 days, they have constructed queen cells, reduced feeding the queen so she
lays fewer eggs and also reduces weight so she can fly, foragers stop foraging so they
can be near the hive to join in the swarm when it occurs, and scouts go out looking for
a new location for "home". An observant, knowledgeable beekeeper can detect these
things long before a swarm happens. Further, swarms occur at TWO distinctly
different times and for distinctly different reasons. The first time for swarming is
in "swarm season" which is that period of tremendous brood production which was
stimulated by the gathering of late winter pollen, and prior to the start of a major
nectar flow. Swarming during swarm season occurs because it is the natural act of
propagation of the species. This is caused by brood chamber congestion, and age of
the queen that controls her ability to produce enough queen pheromone to "glue" a
large number of bees into a single functioning unit, and has NOTHING TO DO with
super space. The second time for swarming is after the swarm season and occurs
during a strong nectar flow! This occurs because the beekeeper has not provided
ENOUGH SUPER SPACE AT THE TIME THAT THE BEES NEEDED SPACE to store a great
deal of thin, watery nectar until they can ripen that nectar into thick honey. When a
swarm occurs in a nectar flow, it is 100% fault of the beekeeper because he did not
have enough supers present when the bees needed them, and NOT the fault of bees!
I hope that I have helped you to make a record honey crop and not lose a swarm.
The results are up to you. I have told you HOW to succeed, but succeeding is YOUR JOB.
George Imirie
Certified EAS Master Beekeeper
GImasterBK@aol.com
FLASH! - Today is Saturday, March 29th. Bill Miller telephoned me from Alabama to
tell me that one of his hives HERE in Rockville just SWARMED on March 28th. His son,
Jeremy, was going to try and catch the swarm this morning. As near as I can remember,
my earliest swarm here in Rockville was April 5th and it weighed 6 pounds, a real
buster. Darn shame that Bill got called away on business for 4 months, because he
was doing everything right to get a good honey crop, reversing and having a young queen.
My colonies are going gang-busters, so I will be adding about 4 supers to each within the
next 10 days and make my last reversal of the brood chambers. I have 6 new Carniolan
queens coming in from Heitkam about April 25th to prepare OBSERVATION Hives for the
MONTGOMERY COUNTY FAIR from August 8-17. By the way, I hope that you will be a
VOLUNTEER at the FAIR to tell all those million attendees the importance of our bees
in the pollination of food for humans to eat. We need at least 54 volunteers, and I hope
we don't have to telephone you and BEG you to donate 4 hours of your time.
Dave and Evelyn Bernard, BOTH Ceritified EAS Master Beekeepers, will be our "head-liners"
for the April 10th meeting, because I can't talk after my throat surgery, and Bill is in
Alabama. WE all hope you SHOW-UP and ask questions!
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