Not a friendly swarm of bees. How to use a bee swarm. How to raid a swarm

If the bees live in a multi-hull hive, then the detachable bottom is separated and replaced with a clean one immediately after the bees fly around, when they calm down a little. The bottom is separated with a chisel, the bodies are lifted, a clean bottom is placed in place of the dirty bottom and the bodies are lowered onto it again.

That's the whole simple operation. They perform it without even using smoke. The bees don't notice her. The taphole is limited by a liner for a small cutout. In one minute, the beekeeper will do what would take the bees at least two weeks of hard work.

It is more difficult to free a hive with a nailed bottom from debris. You have to first clean part of the bottom, having first removed several frames from the hive, then move another part of the frames onto the clean floor and remove the debris that was under them. To make the bees calmer, they are smoked.

During this first spring work, the amount of food is specified, the nests are reduced, if they are large, they are well insulated. For a bee family to develop normally, at this time it must have at least 15 kilograms of honey, 10 frames in a Dadan hive and one or two buildings in a multi-frame hive.

To raise each bee, the family spends a full cell of honey or a whole frame of honey for a brood frame. That's why you need so much of it

Bees carefully and securely hide their honey in the hive from prying eyes. And they not only hide, but also reliably protect from uninvited guests, from intrusion into their home.

The nests are made smaller and insulated to make it easier for bees in this early cold spring to conserve the heat necessary for the development of brood - larvae and pupae.

The family strives in the spring to raise as many young bees as possible to replace those that have survived the winter and grown old. The queen lays more and more eggs. Increasingly, young bees fly around during the midday hours, playing and noisy in flight. They remember their place of residence, get to know the surroundings, and prepare to become foragers.

Queens in the spring like to lay eggs not in dark old ones, but in light young combs. To get more new honeycombs, the nests of growing families are expanded at this time with frames with foundation, on which they quickly build the correct bee cells.

Bees can be made to build more than they can do themselves. After all, honeycombs are very necessary; in the summer you need a lot of them. If you place a frame with foundation between the nesting boxes, the passages for the bees will double in size. It is inconvenient for them to move along such wide streets and move from cell to cell. They immediately accumulate in these passages and begin to narrow them, pulling back the cells on the foundation. In a very short time, two in a day, the cells are already ready. It is better to place a frame with foundation between combs filled with young brood. There are always more construction bees here.

Bees can be given two frames with foundation at a time. During the season, a bee colony can easily build 8 - 10, and in a multi-hull hive - up to 20 honeycombs.

In spring, the queen lays eggs in the warmest part of the nest: either at the top, if the bees live in a multi-frame hive, or in the middle - in a lounger and a 12-frame hive.

So that the queen can lay more eggs, the bodies are swapped. The top one is lowered down, and the bottom one, free of brood, is raised up. Now the uterus will have enough space for a long time, almost two weeks. After this time, the buildings are rearranged again. The one filled with brood will now again be at the bottom, and the one free from it will be at the top.

From such movements there is a lot of brood in the nest and the family becomes even stronger. She no longer has enough two buildings to house bees, honey and beebread. Therefore, the family is given a third building. They put it on top. This three-story house is usually occupied by a family when the gardens are in bloom, from which the bees collect a lot of nectar and pollen. And in other hives, bees colonize full nests.

What is swarming? After the family grows, gets stronger, renews the nest, fills it with brood and food, that is, creates conditions for its well-being and prosperity, it begins to prepare for swarming and takes care of producing fruit - a new family.

Much changes in the behavior of bees. They begin to build honeycombs not with bee cells, but with drone cells.

They carefully clean the old drone honeycombs and polish each cell with propolis until it shines. After all, the queen lays eggs only in very clean, shiny cells. If before this she avoided the drone honeycombs and walked around them, now the bees force her to go onto them and lay eggs.

Look into the nest at this time. In the corners and bottom of the frames you will see pieces with open and printed drone brood, and on the edges of the combs and in the recesses there are some rounded cells like the caps of acorns. These are bowls in which young queens will be raised. And as soon as the bees force the host queen to put eggs in bowls, the family, as if by some signal, stops building even drone combs, the number of bees flying out for nectar and pollen decreases, and the queen lays fewer and fewer eggs every day. The bees almost stop feeding her milk. She is forced to eat honey. The family becomes somewhat sleepy. The nest is overflowing with bees. Huddled close to each other, they sit almost motionless, blocking all the passages. They rest and conserve their strength. Only small groups of old bees continue to fly.

And then one clear morning, when the sun rises higher, the dew subsides, this seemingly dormant hive suddenly begins to hum, and thousands of bees begin to fly out of it, crowding into the entrance, vying with each other. They quickly rise into the air and, as if in a whirlwind, circle over the apiary. The uterus also joins them. There is a special swarm ringing above the apiary. After 2-3 minutes, you can first see a small cluster of bees on some tree branch. It is growing before our eyes. A huge mass of bees, clinging to each other, hangs in a cluster. This is the new young family - the swarm.

Swarms vary in weight. The heaviest ones are up to 5 kilograms. After sitting on a branch for a short time, the swarm leaves, makes a farewell circle over its home and flies off to a new home. More often to the forest or to a lonely tree.

How does the swarm know where this dwelling is? From their intelligence officers. Already a few days before swarming, scouts look for a hollow or even an empty hive in some other apiary. They carefully examine it, determine its exact location, size and inform the bees who are going to fly with the swarm. Many other bees become familiar with this new home and, a day or two before swarming, they even set up a guard there to prevent other bees from settling in it. Therefore, the swarm immediately flies to where it will live.

True, this does not always happen. Sometimes, having not found a suitable hollow in advance, the swarm still flies away from the apiary, lands somewhere, again sends out scout bees in search of housing, and so on until it settles permanently in some place.

And if there is a free hive in the same apiary, will a swarm settle in it? It turns out not. If the swarms settled right there and did not fly away, then quite soon the time would come when there were not enough honey plants for everyone. There would be famine. That is why swarms fly away from their parental shelter.

How to remove a swarm? The swarm can be caught. To do this, while he is sitting calmly on a branch, you need to take a swarm, place the open side under him and shake off the swarm. The bees that were not included in the swarm are carefully collected with a wooden ladle and poured into it.

The swarm is suspended and the remaining bees gradually enter it. They are driven by smoke. The swarm is taken to a dark, cool room (basement, underground) so that the swarm calms down and cools down. By evening he is placed in a new hive.

The swarm consists of strong young bees that have not yet taken part in any work. Therefore, finding themselves in a hollow, where there are no honeycombs, no food, no brood, with extraordinary diligence they begin to create a nest for themselves, store food, and raise offspring. Therefore, a lot of foundation is placed in the hive for the swarm. It is being rebuilt very quickly. They also give the bees ready-made honeycombs, and in case of bad weather, a frame or two with food. The nest of a large swarm is made up of two buildings of a multi-body hive. Swarms do not like cramped small hives and often fly away from them.

When planting a swarm of bees, they take a scoop from the swarm and carefully pour it onto a plywood sheet, placing it against the entrance of the hive. First they pour it closer to the entrance, then further away. They do this so that the bees feel like they are entering a natural home. Gradually, one after another, in small steps, they walk into the hive. Here you can also see the queen; she usually hastily makes her way to the entrance, guided by the special sound and smell of bees.

After the bulk of the bees enter the hive, the remaining ones are shaken out of the swarm.

Roy immediately gets to work. Even during the night he manages to rebuild part of the nest, and in the morning, earlier than others, his bees begin to fly out, get acquainted with the area, and look for flowers.

During the summer, the swarm prepares food for itself for the winter, and sometimes collects more than it needs. You can take this honey from him.

A colony that releases a swarm may swarm once or even twice, but these later swarms will be smaller in weight. They often do not store honey for their food. Therefore, they must be joined to other families.

April 8, 2014 admin

Spring is the time of flowering, abundance of food and the most intensive rearing of brood. With the speed with which the larvae develop, the diligent laying of eggs by the queen leads to a rapid increase in the number of bees in the family and, as a result, to a rapid strengthening of the family, but not to a direct increase in the number of families in the apiary, since each family of bees with a queen is a separate “ state”, in which the bees growing from the brood only replenish the number of its “citizens”.

However, bee colonies must also reproduce. Indeed, often one of the families dies from illness, hunger strike after a bad summer, or due to some other unfortunate event, and if new families did not arise, then soon there would be no bees left at all.

A new family needs a new womb; only if its appearance is ensured can the family as such reproduce, and this happens by “swarming” bees.

Preparations are carried out in complete silence. As a rule, in May, worker bees lay several queen cells and grow in them by

Special feeding of young queens. In most cases, one womb would be enough for them, but misfortune can happen to it. It is not difficult for bees to destroy several extra queens, but it is absolutely impossible to get hold of the missing one at the right time. Nature is not characterized by sentimentality, so a family raises half a dozen or more queens, most of which are doomed to death in advance.

About a week before the first young queen is due to hatch from her cell, the colony swarms. Apparently, in this case, the initiative again comes from the worker bees. Already a few days before this, their activity is somewhat reduced. In a strong colony, bees sit in dense groups in front of the entrance to their home. Suddenly they all become excited, rush into the hive, fall to the honeycomb cells and fill the honey crops with honey. Approximately half of all bees in a colony fly out of the hive. With “knapsacks” full of honey, which they take with them as food on an unknown journey, the bees rush to the entrance and rise up in a disorderly, frantic whirlwind. They spin around, flying into each other. There is a whole cloud of bees in the air. The old queen leaves the hive with them.

Rice. 31. The swarm gathered on a branch around the queen and formed a “swarm cluster”.

At first their path is not far. A cloud of bees gathers near a tree branch or some other object (Fig. 30) and is located on it in a dense swarm “cluster” around the uterus (Fig. 31). Now comes the moment when an efficient beekeeper can easily transfer a swarm to an empty hive and consider it his own. A beekeeper who hesitates too much may miss the swarm. After all, while the swarm hangs inactively on a branch, its quarterers (scout bees) are already diligently looking for a hollow tree or an empty hive suitable for the swarm, which is often located in a distant apiary. Returning, they set the swarm in motion and lift it into the air. The swarm cluster scatters, and again the bees, like a cloud, move in the heights, heading to their new home, where the scout bees lead them. As luck would have it, this often happens precisely at the moment when the beekeeper has already completed all preparations for removing the swarm from the tree.

The remaining bees in the old hive now have no head of their kingdom. However, after a few days the first young queen hatches. She does not immediately begin her maternal duties. The queen that has just emerged from the queen cell is virgin (barren) and must make a mating flight before she can begin laying eggs. The queen is not inseminated inside the bee hive. In most cases, during the first week after leaving the queen cell, she flies out of the hive into the wild and mates in the air with one or more drones.

The flight may repeat in subsequent days. After this she becomes the sedate mother of the bee; a family that never leaves its home - unless next year, when it is dethroned by the young queen and rushes to the entrance with a new swarm. This is how the process works if a family releases only one swarm. In this case, after the birth of the first young queen, worker bees destroy all excess queen cells along with their living contents. But the young queen and some of the bees can fly out with the second swarm.

In this case, after the first queen emerges, the worker bees first of all save the lives of other young queens. They do not leave their queen cells, because a queen walking freely will not tolerate the presence of other queens in the hive and will immediately attack them. The queens sitting in the queen cells only stick their proboscis out through small holes in their queen cells and receive food from the worker bees. At this time, a peculiar duet sounds in the hive. The queen walking through the honeycombs makes the sounds “tyu-tyu” (“baling”), and the queens located in the queen cells announce themselves with other sounds: a muffled “kva-kva” is heard from their dungeons.

The beekeeper says that the croaking queens are asking for freedom, but while the response is “popping”, they are careful not to leave their shelters. Bees cannot “hear” like we can, and it is very doubtful that they can tell the difference between a “beep” and a “croak.” But thanks to their finely developed sense of touch, they can very well perceive sounds in their immediate vicinity. If you artificially reproduce such sounds, you can talk with one of the queen bees, making a “duet” of questions and answers with her. Smell probably also takes part in keeping young queens from leaving the queen cells prematurely. In any case, being in the queen cells, the queens feel when their rival flies away with a new swarm. After this, they get out of their cradles. One queen remains in the hive and becomes the mother of the family, while the rest are killed.

Sometimes more swarms leave and, accordingly, more queens come into their own. On the other hand, with unfavorable weather and poor nutrition, swarming may not occur at all.

Among beekeepers of home apiaries there are many supporters of swarm freedom. Indeed, natural swarming, although from the point of view of modern beekeeping is considered undesirable, makes it possible to obtain new colonies, distinguished from the first days of birth by unusually high energy in all areas of activity: in the construction of combs, collecting nectar, raising brood.

Swarms that emerge early, 45-50 days before the main migration, have time to rebuild nests, raise a lot of brood, and become significantly rejuvenated. True, they may still not be strong enough to use the first main bribe, but on subsequent ones they work almost on an equal basis with strong families. It is no coincidence that they say: the early swarm is golden.

Colonies that have released swarms will also restore their strength by the first main honey flow by the bees emerging from the brood remaining after the swarming, and with the start of oviposition of young queens, their working capacity. Over time, they will even begin to be strengthened by bees that have developed from the brood of young queens. As a result, swarm families manage to stock up on food.

The main honey flow is well used by swarms that emerge immediately before it or at the very beginning. They are often heavier than the early ones, since the period of growth of their maternal families was longer. In addition, summer swarms themselves directly work on honey collection with their inherent energy, and from early swarms, honey is collected mainly by generations raised by swarms.

But during the main harvest, the summer swarms wear out and weaken, while the subsequent swarms are used much worse than the earlier swarms, and increase generations significantly less by winter. Often such swarms have to replenish their food supplies, since they manage to use up the food stored from the first honey collection. Often these swarms unite two or three into one family. Often such powerful families are formed naturally, during the act of swarming. The first swarm that emerges is inoculated with a second, sometimes even a third. Such cases most often occur when the emergence of swarms is delayed due to bad weather. They are usually called landfills. It is impossible and practically impractical to separate landfill swarms. Therefore, they are placed in one large hive and equipped with honey extensions. Strong colonies created from natural swarms are called honey makers for their high productivity.

Maternal families that released swarms shortly before the main honey flow do not have time to create new flight reserves, and, moreover, as a rule, continue to remain in a swarm state.

When swarming occurs in some average period, for example, two to three weeks before the main honey flow, the swarms have time to build nests for themselves, have a lot of brood, but collect little honey and pollen, since during the first main honey flow a significant part of the bees are distracted by caring for the brood, simultaneously spending a large amount of fresh food on it.

By the time the main honey plants bloom, maternal colonies manage to end the swarming state, the young queens in them mate and begin laying eggs; they begin to work with the energy inherent in a swarm, but compared to non-swarm families they turn out to be weaker and, naturally, much less productive.

It is better to plant swarms that emerged the day before or at the beginning of a short and stormy harvest on ready-made, built-up combs. In this case, all the reserves of the swarm will immediately be included in the collection of honey. When a swarm is planted on foundation, its primary task will be to build a nest, which is why it only partially uses the source of nectar.

Swarms that are not strong enough on their own will not be able to produce marketable honey; at the beginning of the honey harvest, they are usually added to families that have already finished swarming and switched to collecting honey. They already have brood from young queens - a stimulator of flight activity, but they lack reserves for collecting honey. Reinforcement by swarms greatly increases their productivity. These swarms can be attached either entirely or in parts, adding bees to several families.

The return of swarms to their families causes protest from the bees themselves. The swarms emerge again, even without queens.

To exclude the possible death of the queen of the colony being reinforced, the bees of the swarm are poured into an extension with a bottom made of a dividing grid. His uterus is used at discretion. In a former swarm colony that has already switched to collecting honey, by this time there may be no open brood or there may be very little of it, since the young swarm queen barely has time to mate and begin laying eggs. Now, strengthened by the swarm, it will consist mainly of bees capable of collecting honey. Such families also become honey growers.

The productivity of swarms can be increased by strengthening them with flight reserves and printed brood remaining in the maternal colonies. To do this, the hive with the swarm family is set aside, a hive for the swarm is placed in its place and populated. The next day his sister bees will fly to him. After another 2-3 days, frames with mature brood at the exit are transferred to the swarm nest from the mother hive, and the hive with the remaining nest and flightless bees is brought closer to the hive with the swarm. There is no need to leave large reserves in the maternal family, since its main function is to temporarily preserve the young queen and raise brood from her.

With the end of the honey harvest and before the apiary is transported to new sources, the maternal family is eliminated and added to the swarm. The old queen is destroyed.

The technique of using swarms in honey collection is determined by the strength of the families that released the swarm, and the timing of swarming of bee colonies.

Using swarms released 10 days before honey collection

If the swarm emerges several days before the onset of honey flow, then practically

all bees that come out with a swarm use honey collection. Moreover, the stronger the swarm, the more honey it will collect. Swarming bees have higher working energy than bees remaining in the main colony, so the swarm is reinforced with printed brood and flight bees of the swarming bee colony.

To strengthen the swarm, one or two frames from the main swarming bee colony are moved into a clean, disinfected hive. All frames are carefully inspected and any queen cells present on them are removed. Frames with foundation are placed between the frames with brood. The swarm nest is made up of two bodies or one body and two extensions. Most of the frames with printed brood and foundation, alternating with each other, are placed in the upper body or extensions. When working with bed hives, the new nest is completed in such a way that it occupies the entire body.

The prepared hive is placed in the place where the bee family that released this swarm was located, and the hive with the remaining bees of the main family is taken to a new place. Flight bees from the main swarming bee colony will fly into the swarming hive and join the flight swarming bees. As a result, a strong honey colony is formed with a large number of flying bees with high working energy.

Young bees emerging from the brood will further strengthen the swarm and will soon take part in collecting honey.

The bee colony that has released the swarm is taken to a new place, the next day it is carefully examined and two cores are formed from the open brood and the remaining young flightless bees. When organizing the cores, the hive is divided by a blind partition into two parts with independent entrances. One nucleus is placed in each compartment, in which one mature printed queen cell is left, and the remaining queen cells present on the honeycombs of the swarming bee colony are broken out. Since there will be no flying bees in the nucs for some time, a small amount of water is poured into the honeycombs. After the queens emerge from the queen cells, the beekeeper must monitor the mating of the queen with the drone and the beginning of her laying eggs.

If the upcoming main honey flow is long but low, then the queen in the swarm will lay a large number of eggs and there will be a lot of open brood in the hive, which will lead to a decrease in honey flow. In this case, the old queen is taken from the swarm before honey collection and a mature printed queen cell is given to it. The old queen is returned to the maternal family, which is later united with the swarm, which is greatly weakened by the honey collection.

Using swarms released 20-30 days before honey collection

To determine the state of the swarm at the time of honey harvest, you need to know that the development cycle of a bee from an egg lasts 21 days; if a swarm is planted in a newly formed nest, the first young bees will appear in it 3 weeks after swarming; in summer, bees live 35-40 days; A young flying bee flies out with the swarm (average age 15-20 days), which will live no more than 20-25 days. Consequently, almost the majority of flying bees in a swarm will die before a new generation appears to replace them. When a beekeeper forms a new nest for a swarm, he gives it one or two frames of brood of different ages. In addition, some of the flying bees younger than 15 days fly out of the hive, so although most of the flying bees in the swarm will die off, a small part of them will remain by the time the honey flow begins. Only there will be so few of them that the swarm will not be able to collect any amount of marketable honey; it will not even provide itself with food supplies for the winter.

In a colony that has released a swarm, the young queen will hatch 2-6 days after the swarm leaves. It will take at least 10 days for her to mate with the drone and begin laying eggs, from which only after 21 days the first young bees will begin to hatch. Consequently, only 35-40 days after the swarm emerges, new bees from the young queen will appear in the family. Young bees will begin to fly out for nectar in 10-15 days, that is, 45-55 days after the bee colony swarms.

A significant part of the bees previously present in the family will die during this time, and only those bees that hatched at a later date will remain; 20-30 days after the emergence of the swarm, the main honey flow begins, but only a small part of the old bees remaining in the hive will use it, as a result of which the family will not collect marketable products and will not provide itself with food for the winter.

At such times of swarming, neither the swarm nor the swarming bee colony will collect honey. Breaking out the queen cells on the honeycomb to prevent swarming does not bring any effect, since the working condition of the bee colony is not restored. When the swarm returns back to the mother colony, the bees again lay queen cells and swarm again.

When keeping bees in a two-hull hive, the colony that has released the swarm is left in the lower building. After a thorough inspection of the nest, she should have only one mature printed queen cell on the comb, located in the upper or middle part of the comb. A swarm is placed in the second building, the nest for which is equipped depending on its strength. The swarm bees are given the maximum number of frames with foundation, using the swarm energy of the bees and their ability to build a large number of combs. The tap hole in the upper body is directed in the opposite direction with respect to the tap hole of the first body. A blank plywood partition is placed between the buildings.

Before the onset of the main honey flow, the family that released the swarm hatches a young queen, and the swarm with the old queen develops and builds a large number of new combs. When honey flow begins, the blind partition between the buildings is removed and the main bee colony is combined with the swarm. The old queen is removed and the combs are simultaneously regrouped in such a way that frames with printed brood are concentrated in the upper body, open brood is concentrated in the lower body. When united, two weak families are formed into one strong honey family with a young queen. The bees of this family work well in honey collection. It is advisable to temporarily preserve the old queen in a one- or two-frame nucleus for additional growth of bees for the winter period.

When keeping bees in a multi-hull hive, depending on the strength of the swarm and the bee colony that released it, the swarm is planted in one or two upper buildings with entrances directed in the opposite direction to the entrance of the lower buildings, in which the main family is left. A blank plywood partition is placed between the buildings. One or two frames of mixed-age, mostly open brood, one or two light brown combs with dry material, and honey-beebread combs along the edges of the nest are placed in the housings intended for swarming. The rest of the space is filled with frames with foundation, which the swarming bees will build well.

In buildings with the main family, only one mature queen cell is left for the swarming family. Subsequently, when the main honey flow begins, the blind partition between the buildings is removed and both bee colonies are united, leaving the young queen. A united honey-farming family will work well in the honey harvest, provide itself with food supplies for the winter and produce marketable products.

When keeping bees in a hive-bed, after a thorough examination of the main bee colony that released the swarm, all queen cells are cut out from it, except for one of the largest ones, the nest is reduced and left in the same place. The hive is partitioned into two parts by a blind partition; a swarm is placed in a new compartment, which has an independent entrance. When completing a nest for swarming bees, a new compartment is given two honey-bread combs, one or two frames with mixed-age, mostly printed brood, and one or two light brown combs for the queen to lay eggs. The rest of the compartment space is filled with frames with foundation. Swarming bees, having high working energy, build a large number of new honeycombs, and at this time the main bee colony breeds a queen.

When honey flow begins, the blind partition separating the hive into two parts is moved to the edge of the nest, forming a compartment with one or two frames. The old uterus is transplanted here along with the comb on which it is located. The organized nucleus is used for additional growth of bees for the winter period. The main family is combined with the swarm, forming a honey family with a young queen, which works well in honey collection.

Using swarms released 45-50 days before honey collection

To determine the state of the swarm at the time of honey harvest, you need to know that the lifespan of bees in the summer is 35-40 days; young bees (average age 15-20 days) flew out with the swarm and will live another 20-25 days. Consequently, regardless of the strength of the emerging swarm, all swarming bees will die off by the time the honey harvest begins. The swarm will only have those bees that appear after the bee colony has swarmed.

After the swarm is planted in a new nest, the queen begins laying eggs, from which after 21 days the first young bees will emerge before the onset of honey harvest, there are still about 25 days left. During this time, the swarm will fully restore its strength and will accumulate a large number of bees that make good use of the honey collection. During the period between swarming and honey collection, swarming bees, which have high working energy, will build a large number of combs.

In the main colony that has released a swarm, a young queen will emerge a few days after swarming. After about 10 days, she will be fertilized and begin laying eggs. After another 21 days, these eggs will hatch into young bees. From the moment of swarming to the appearance of the first young bees from the new queen, 35-40 days will pass. By the time the honey harvest begins, young bees will appear in the main bee colony, capable of carrying out the work of bringing nectar. Their number will increase every day.

The bee colony will be able to provide itself with food supplies for the winter, and under favorable conditions, will collect marketable products.

The swarm that emerged 45-50 days before the main honey flow and the bee colony that released the swarm can be used independently at the honey flow. If the plan does not provide for an increase in the apiary, then the swarm is planted in the same hive (in the upper buildings when keeping bees with multi-hulls and double-hulls and at the edge of the nest when bees are kept in hives-beds), separating it from the main bee colony with a blank plywood partition. When the honey harvest begins, the swarm is combined with the mother family and a strong honey family is obtained, which collects a lot of honey. Before families are united, swarming bees are used to build new honeycombs.

Use of weak swarms in honey collection

If, before the onset of the main honey flow, swarms of small strength (weighing 1-2 kg) emerge, then for better honey collection, 2-3 such swarms are combined, concentrating a large number of young bees in one family. For such a united, dump swarm, a large nest is completed at once. When keeping bees in multi-hull hives, 3 buildings are used for the nest; in 12-frame hives with extensions - 2 bodies or 1 body and two extensions, and in bed hives - a full hive body.

When placing several swarms of bees in one nest, they are sprayed with liquid sugar syrup or a common scent is given to the bees. These swarms are planted in the hive not through the entrance, but on top of the nest through a dividing lattice. This makes it possible to detect and catch all the young queens, the best of which is enclosed in a cage and placed in a nest between the frames. The queen is released onto the comb the next day.

Swarms from medium and weak families are used only for honey collection, while simultaneously replacing queens in the main families.

Roy from a weak family

The swarm emerging from a weak or average family is planted in a new hive, located 2 m from the main family and the entrance in the other direction. In a family that has released a swarm, the queen cells are destroyed. Two and a half weeks after the release of the first swarm, the main family is examined and it is determined whether the young queen has been fertilized or not. If there is open brood and its quality is high, then the young queen is complete and the old one can be destroyed. Then the bees will lay queen cells on open brood, which should not be destroyed. While the queen is hatching, there will be no open brood in the swarm, so all the nectar brought will be accumulated, as if in a piggy bank.

The break between the scarring of the old queen and the beginning of the scarring of the new one lasts 25-30 days. All honey brought during this time is stored in the nest, no one eats it. During the period of reddening of the young uterus, bribes begin to decrease. Therefore, the young queen in the swarm is destroyed, and the frames with brood and bees are attached to the main colony from which the swarm emerged. Strengthening the colony with bees of their swarm at the end of the bribe gives positive results. Honey from the swarm is sold as a marketable product.

Swarms with wormy old queens collect 18 - 25 kg of honey, and in which the old queens were destroyed and given the opportunity to breed young ones, from 25 to 45 kg of honey were collected.

If there is a shortage of hives in the apiary, you can use the second and third buildings for planting swarms, if you nail a plywood bottom to them and make a notch. The body is placed on the hive with the family that released the swarm, but with the entrance in the opposite direction. They collect a nest in it and plant a swarm. The swarm sitting in the second or third building is easier to unite with the main family after the destruction of the swarm queen. To do this, the plywood bottom is opened and the canvases are removed from the family.

If there is a shortage of hives and buildings in the apiary, two swarms can be combined. The queens are not found. Swarms with queens of different ages, for example, fertile and infertile, should not be combined. In such cases, the bees fight. Fights between bees of united swarms also happen when there is absolutely no bribe in nature. To prevent bees from fighting, the swarms must be fed, and one or two frames with printed honey must be placed in the hive.

Merged swarms work well. There is no need to join them to the main families at the end of the bribe, as this will worsen the quality of the main families. It is better to use these swarms as honey collectors. To do this, the young queen, when she begins to lay eggs, is destroyed.

It will take about 30 days until the bees breed a new queen and she begins to worm. During this time, the bribes will end. There will be no brood in the hive, just filled frames! honey. All honey is selected as a marketable product, and worn-out bees, unfit for wintering, are destroyed or transferred to pharmacies to obtain bee venom, necessary for the treatment of rheumatism, radiculitis, asthma and other diseases.

This use of swarms allows you to replace queens without losing commercial honey and build many first-class honeycombs.