Swarm Control Descriptive Transcript 

Summary: Paul Kelly, research and apiary manager, instructs viewers on how to control and prevent swarms. 

00:00 - 00:23
[The video opens with close-up footage of a hive covered in bees and someone puffing smoke on it using a bee smoker. The text ÒSwarm ControlÓ fades in. The video transitions to a montage of seven shots showcasing honey bees and different elements of the research centre, ending with footage of a bee taking off from a yellow flower as the logo for the Honey Bee Research Centre fades in.]

00:26 - 01:15
[Cut to medium shot of Paul Kelly standing outdoors behind two hives holding an active bee smoker.]

Paul Kelly: OK we're here this time to talk about swarm prevention and swarm control. Oh got a bee after me there. With prevention what we are trying to do is to stop the bees from even beginning to prepare to swarm. And swarming happens when the hive gets really crowded, there's a lot of congestion in the hive, and there isn't enough queen pheromone going around, so they start to raise new queens and then they will swarm prior to those new queens hatching out, but as a beekeeper we don't really want bees to swarm because we lose our production. Bees are living off in a hollow tree somewhere aren't going to help us out, so we try to prevent that swarming from happening so that we get more honey production.

01:15 - 02:21
Paul: So what we do as far as swarm prevention with our colonies is we first thing in the spring we go around and we label them with how many frames of bees there are, so we know which colonies to go back and inspect for swarming and which ones may need supering earlier. One of the preventative measures for swarming is to provide space for bees so they're not as congested so we provide space by adding honey supers so the process of supering the colonies helps to prevent swarming.
If we have a young queen in the colony, that helps prevent swarming as well and there are certain strains of bees that are less prone to swarming, and so we try and keep those bees in our hive and we select for colonies that have a low tendency to swarm. We do clip our queens’ wings, which helps to prevent swarming, but it really just delays that until a virgin can hatch out so that we can't rely on that alone. Adding supers at an appropriate time is the most effective way of preventing swarming. So we'll just have a look through.

02:21 - 02:37

Paul: This colony was rated a five. [Camera zooms in on hive with an exterior covered in bees.] As you can see now it has grown, so there are ten frames of bees plus. There's lots and lots of bees in there, we're too late in adding a super to this colony. We should have been here sooner on this one.

02:37 - 03:31
[Camera pans over to adjacent hive that is not covered in bees.]

Paul: This colony is probably not as bad as far as preparing to swarm, so we'll just have look and we will be supering these colonies right now, [Paul removes lid and inner cover from hive.] but I'm just going to have a look see, OK lots of bees there side to side. [Camera zooms in on open hive.] Again this earlier was rated 4.5, it's now ten frames of bees, so that was rated 4.5 on April 19th and now we are at May 24th, so we'll just take frames out and we'll have a look see if they are raising any queen cells. If they are, we are going to remove those queen cells.

03:36 - 04:33
Paul: So just very gently pull that frame out. There is a lot of drone brood on this frame and so it's a little hard to take out. [Paul pulls frame out of hive and camera zooms in on it.] OK, so you would see swarm cells in locations where there is room for a cell to hang down, that is a queen cup. Doesn't mean they are preparing to swarm because often they have those cups around just in case they need them. So that is a queen cup. We differentiate queen cups from queen cells. If it's a queen cup
there's nothing in it, if it's a queen cell it will have an egg or a larva or a pupa. So to see if there is any egg in there we just open up the cell with our fingers, look inside and there is no egg there at all so that's just a cup, no indication that they are preparing to swarm on this frame.

04:36 - 05:25
[Cut to Paul removing another frame from the hive.]

Paul: Having a look for the queen as we go, just to try to make sure everything is good. [Cut to close-up footage of brood on the frame.] Lots of nice brood in there. This hive is just going to explode with bees. [Cut to Paul holding a frame up.] We see another cup here [Cut to extreme close-up of cup on the frame.] and there is nothing inside that cup, so no indication that they are preparing to swarm. [Cut to Paul removing another frame from the hive. He examines the frame as he speaks.] We'll look at three brood frames. If we are on brood frames, that's where the queen cells will be if they are raising any, so we don't have to look at all of them because we'll find cells if they are on even just by looking at as few as three frames. I don't even see any cups on that frame.

05:28 - 06:05
[Cut to time-lapse footage of Paul removing the next frame from the hive. He examines the frame as he speaks.]

Paul: We would look in places like this for queen cells or sometimes on the face of the brood, but anywhere where they have space for that cell to hang. [Camera zooms in on queen cup on the frame.] There is another queen cup over here, but there is no indication that they are in use. [Camera zooms out to Paul holding the frame.] We'll just open that up there, no, nothing there at all. So this colony is not preparing to swarm, [Paul returns the frame to the hive.] it might later though, so what we are going to do is we'll add two honey supers to this colony because it is a good strong hive and we need to give lots of space to help relieve congestion to prevent swarming.

06:05 - 06:56
Paul: So I'll just get that frame in there. There's a lot of bees on this frame and there's some drone comb on here. It's going to be hard to get it in there without crushing bees, so I'm just going to give them a shake on the ground right near the entrance [Paul adds the frame to the hive.] and we're going to add our queen excluder and then our two supers to that hive. Give them a little bit of smoke so that the queen excluder isn't crushing bees and then we'll just set that [the queen excluder] down, get it squared up. We'll add one super on, make sure they're nice and straight, put a second super on there. That looks good, OK.

06:56 - 07:18
Paul: So we know that hive isn't going to swarm and we've supered it to help prevent it from swarming and that's about all we can do for now. [Paul adds the inner cover and lid to the hive he just supered.] This next hive we'll have a look through and with all those bees hanging out front there it wouldn't surprise me if it's preparing to swarm.

07:20 – 07:48
[Camera focuses on hive covered in bees. Paul puffs smoke on the hive.]

Paul: Again we are kind of late with getting to this one for supering. The weather got really warm all of a sudden here and things are just jumping. [Cut to extreme close-up footage of bees dancing.] We even saw a few bees dancing on the surface of the front of the hive, dancing to indicate where to find flowers. There was a number of different directions being indicated there.

07:45 - 07:48
[Cut to footage of Paul removing inner cover off of hive. Camera zooms in on top of open hive. Paul puffs smoke over hive.]

Paul: So lots and lots of bees inside this hive and outside as you can see. So bees from one side to another. So if we see swarm cells in here we're going to have to make a decision as what to do. That will be based on what we see and if we can find the queen. 

08:12 - 08:42
[Paul removes frame from the hive and examines it while speaking.]

Paul: Lots of capped brood here and again along the bottom there we see cups, [Camera zooms in on cups.] but they may actually be cells they've been drawn out a little bit, so let's open one up and see if there is anything inside of it. Aha there is an egg in that one. So this is now a swarm cell and they are preparing to swarm. Just because they are preparing to swarm doesn't mean they actually will if they get on to a good nectar flow sometimes they abandon swarming.

08:43 - 09:23
[Camera zooms out to show Paul examining the frame.]

Paul: Now what I am going to do is look for eggs to make sure the queen is still laying. Yes I see lots of eggs. So the queen at least three days ago was laying eggs. [Cut to extreme close-up of frame showing eggs that have been laid.] OK so the queen is still laying. If she was not laying I would not destroy the cells [Cut to Paul holding frame.] because if she is not laying they may already have swarmed and the queen is gone and if we destroy all the cells the hive will have no queen.

09:24 - 10:25
Paul: So we are going to have a quick look for the queen. [Time-lapse footage of Paul removing and examining the frames from the hive to locate the queen.] There she is. [Camera zooms in on frame as Paul points to the queen bee.] So she is getting smaller, she'll be laying less eggs now as she is preparing to swarm. So you can see her abdomen is not that big, she is shrinking up and getting ready to fly away, but that won't happen because one wing is clipped, [Camera zooms out.] so what we are going to do is we will cage this queen and then we will remove any queen cells that are present [Paul sets frame aside as he prepares to cage the queen.] and that will prevent them from swarming and we'll give them four honey supers because they need a lot of space with all these bees. [Paul places queen in cage.]

10:31 - 11:21
Paul: OK so we set the frame down there and then we are going to shake off each of the brood frames. This one I can see is solid honey, so there won't be any cells there. So we make lots of space, I've got two frames out of the box, so I've got lots of room to shake and we just shake the bees off like that and check for cells. [Paul shakes the frame so the bees fall into the hive and looks for cells.] There's a cup, cup, you don't have to look for them all now you are just looking for cups or cells and destroying all of them. If we miss one there wasn't much point doing this because they could still swarm. So that's why we shake the bees off because we will miss them for sure or miss some for sure if we don't have the bees all out of the way. [Paul repeats the process with the remaining frames.]

11:25 - 12:23
Paul: So cup, cup, cup and then just scan the rest there. So it doesn't take that long to do this. On a nice sunny day when there is a good nectar flow bees are pretty easy to get along with and we are able to shake them off like that. Oh there's a more developed cell. [Camera zooms in on cell on the frame.] I didn't see that before because the bees were covering the frame, but if I open that cell up you can see it is full with royal jelly and there's the larva there. So that larva would be I'm guessing four to five days old. So they are getting along on their way to swarming so that's why that queen was getting smaller [Camera zooms out.] because the swarming is more imminent than I thought at first.

12:23 -13:15
Paul: I'm just going to scrape that whole, there's probably a number of queen cups in there, so we'll just scrape that off. Most of these don't even have eggs in them, but rather than take the time to look, we just destroy them all. [Paul returns the frame to the hive. Time-lapse footage starts of Paul repeating the process with the rest of the frames.] So now we are done there, we can release the queen. There she is dropping down in and away she goes. So now we can put our queen excluder on [Paul puffs smoke on the hive.] and add our supers to this hive and it needs lots, it's ready to go. [Four supers are added on top of the hive. Paul adds the inner cover and lid.]

13:58 - 14:29
[Paul stands beside the hive and speaks to the camera.]

Paul: So we're hoping all that space and the fact that we removed those queen cells will eliminate the chance that they will carry on with swarming, but we will come check back within 10 days to see if there are queen cells present and if so repeat that process. Quite likely though we'll be getting into a major nectar flow and that will be it, they won't they will abandon this swarming impulse and get on to collecting nectar. See you next time.