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Hiya,
On the back of Crichmond's comment on the other active bee thread (http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...rls_25219.html)...............
Our fellow beekeeper on the lottie lost his naturally swarmed colony midsummer, leaving us with just my colony ticking along. He's preparing himself to set up again in spring, as is a new person to whom we passed on a complete hive to (Thanks to my eagle-eyed Freecycle watching!). So that will make 3 hives total if all goes to plan.
Well, we've been planning to use brood frames from my overwintered colony to set up theirs. My queen, and thus the bees, are placid, productive and healthy so makes sense to propagate their genetic pool.
So the question is, artificial swarm or nucleus building? If we were just setting one hive up, artificial swarm makes sense, but as we want to establish two, would making 2 or 3 small nuclei using the old polystyrene boxes approach and homemade frames be a better approach? I'm conscious that I don't want to impact my colony by losing more than a couple of frames max and the importance of keeping a nucleus small enough that the transferred brood can be temperature maintained for correct larval development as the colony slowly expands. Of course, the safest way for my hive would/could be x1 artificial swarm and just try to locate a natural swarm for the 3rd hive!
I'm reading up, thinking and checking out the other forums, but any thoughts on the subject from GYOers?????
Cheers P17B
P.S. Apologies to non-beekeepers for the terms used above. Swarms are just nature's way of splitting existing bee colonies and thus increasing the number of individual populations in the wild. An artificial swarm is where the beekeeper moves part of his colony into a new hive using jiggerpokery to fool the bees into believing they have just naturally swarmed. A nucleus is effectively a mini-hive built in a small dedicated box with wax comb on wooden frames, from where you can build up a brand new colony with a new queen. Breeding husbandry in effect. Hope that helps demistify things...????
On the back of Crichmond's comment on the other active bee thread (http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...rls_25219.html)...............
Our fellow beekeeper on the lottie lost his naturally swarmed colony midsummer, leaving us with just my colony ticking along. He's preparing himself to set up again in spring, as is a new person to whom we passed on a complete hive to (Thanks to my eagle-eyed Freecycle watching!). So that will make 3 hives total if all goes to plan.
Well, we've been planning to use brood frames from my overwintered colony to set up theirs. My queen, and thus the bees, are placid, productive and healthy so makes sense to propagate their genetic pool.
So the question is, artificial swarm or nucleus building? If we were just setting one hive up, artificial swarm makes sense, but as we want to establish two, would making 2 or 3 small nuclei using the old polystyrene boxes approach and homemade frames be a better approach? I'm conscious that I don't want to impact my colony by losing more than a couple of frames max and the importance of keeping a nucleus small enough that the transferred brood can be temperature maintained for correct larval development as the colony slowly expands. Of course, the safest way for my hive would/could be x1 artificial swarm and just try to locate a natural swarm for the 3rd hive!
I'm reading up, thinking and checking out the other forums, but any thoughts on the subject from GYOers?????
Cheers P17B
P.S. Apologies to non-beekeepers for the terms used above. Swarms are just nature's way of splitting existing bee colonies and thus increasing the number of individual populations in the wild. An artificial swarm is where the beekeeper moves part of his colony into a new hive using jiggerpokery to fool the bees into believing they have just naturally swarmed. A nucleus is effectively a mini-hive built in a small dedicated box with wax comb on wooden frames, from where you can build up a brand new colony with a new queen. Breeding husbandry in effect. Hope that helps demistify things...????
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