An Unusual Swarm Control Method transcript

yard we're in Mountain City Georgia and we're in here to try to equalize these colonies and keep them under control until that we get them split next week they're scheduled to be split next week and we just trying to keep them from swarming on us before we get it done so one of the fellas I buy Queens from in south Georgia scheduled to have 200 Queens next week just called me and told me that he is not going to be able to do it because he's got a bunch of colonies down in the orange grows in Florida and later this week in the beginning of next week he has to move them out it's he's forced to do it and he's not going to be at home to harvest the queens that he's supposed to send to us so now we got to figure out how we're going to keep these bees under control we have a pivar APA guard excuse me APA guard which is the thymol gel on the truck and we've been giving it to some colonies and we're going to give these guys a heavy dose to try to stop their brood reard and kind of shock The Colony a little bit stop the queen from laying for a few days perhaps and basically just try to shock them into not doing anything drastic like building swarm cells over the next five or six days it works I've done it before anytime you can break The Brood cycle in a colony you just curtail swarming for a while so we're going to kind of play a little bit of a game kind of a kind of a different type of idea on that same scenario see if we can break The Brood cycle shortly here push the bees tendency to want to build swarm cells back at least a week or two try to keep them under control so the plans have changed not only this yard but we've got to do some other yards too okay so right off the bat we got some Colleen's that are absolutely loaded I wish I could split them today honestly Oscar's got some unsealed cells right there John's yours is okay it's loaded with bees though isn't it you got a bunch of them Oscar or just a few no you got several yeah okay let's take this colony and split it we got several dead spots here let's make three or four colonies out of this one there's a dead spot right next door we can fill and a couple of these others we got boxes and lids with us so we can do that um how's the weight on these guys this one's heavy oh okay if anything that's heavy do not feed it we do not want to stimulate them anymore so I mean it doesn't take a lot of weight maybe you know three or four frames of honey for the next few weeks will be fine okay so Oscar what I suggest is you just take that box and put it where Seth's smoker is just get the boxes separated and uh and then I'd like to make two more if there's enough sales you may not have sales on four different frames but if you do we'll make four splits total while you're watching watch for the queen and kill her this yard's gonna get re-queen this year entirely so we can start right now if you find the queen killer if you don't find her don't worry about it uh so John you're just going to get an apiguard right now the reason we're putting it between the boxes instead of on top like we usually do is because of this cool weather I don't think it would activate very well up on top but in the middle it'll activate really well I've done this before several times this exact same thing so it does work and in the meantime we're treating thermites a little too so why not and that should buy us a week or two I think it'll be interesting to see if it works in this case that thing is loaded with these yeah it's a good now the ones that we're splitting with Queen sales Oscar I do not want to treat with a for garden you do not want to treat with those open Queen cells like that breaking The Brood cycle is almost a mic treatment in itself so that's good enough see what this one's like sorry okay let's see what this one's like yeah that looks pretty good just put it up on that lid stand it on end lots of Cups but I don't see any larvae or eggs oops Yeah you're good that's beautiful how heavy is the box that's the weight okay no feed a heavy apiguard right in the center there there we go let's get another paper guard okay killer go ahead and kill her there you go so yeah that makes it quick now move with it yeah that's a beautiful quality right there products they killed too many bees John okay great I I like I said I wish we could split these right now they're ready right now they're like they're perfect aren't they yeah okay well it is what it is hopefully not find too many with cells in them here's another part of the scenario too we've been getting Queens from Chris Werner every week starting last week and uh they're coming on time Chris is good but the other problem is that the bees are two weeks ahead of schedule and we booked all our Queens in October and set the schedule and if I would have known that the bees were going to be doing this I would have tried to get Queens a little bit earlier but the schedule's set we have to stick with it and so it is what it is heavy oh I believe huh we're clear no clear okay all right [Music] that's an old cell checking well that's a pretty new looking Let's uh should see if they got it no eggs have you been in the bottom okay so there's barely any cat food okay Market is a Virgin Queen do not treat it you don't want to put egg the garden something that's trying to mate a queen in some cases they'll eat this dead larva either way they're going to clean it out I mean we could go to the work and clean it out but the bees will actually do a pretty good job themselves and then when they get over that let's put that dead center and when they get over that little shock they're just going to build more all with every single one looks like this so just prop it up on end here that makes it really easy to see here I also like to turn it towards the sun too turn it the other way and it'll be in the sun it'll make it a lot easier to see there you go now you can really see them okay that's good enough so I should also mention what's that I'll have these that box no feed then [Music] ditto huh ditto ditto I haven't seen any mites in the Drone Brew yet I haven't either and I've looked every time you got no sales in this one okay we got a lot of yards in it just like this over the next few days we had a lot of work to do nice sign pick it up yeah go ahead Jason so I take a sharpie and Mark 50 milliliters on here since we're doing double deep so I do 50 milliliters and we do 30 for the singles and uh that way it makes it really easy to just draw back to that line and and uh and put it on the card since we're doing so many cards you know something else I notice what's that this stuff has more smell to it than the stuff from last year you see can you smell it a little bit yeah last year's stuff didn't smell as strong as this and you want to try to make sure that you keep it mixed as you go I'll tell you although this is kind of a swarm control measure I don't mind the idea of giving them a little mic treatment right now hey we're doing the same thing in this yard except for we're equalizing as we go this yard has not been equalized yet taking them down to six frames of brood maybe seven paper guard treatment second story box inside feeder full of food and this yard's a little bit on the light side so almost every colony is getting a two gallon bucket too we'll probably get back here in about two and a half weeks according to my schedule my calendar it's kind of overcast it's not a very nice day suddenly but the bees are still acting okay they're bringing in a little pollen maybe they're preoccupied a lot of Brew coming out of here we I don't know what we're going to do with the brood we're bringing out of here but I've got to take some out here we'll take it down South tomorrow we'll find a place for it Brandon show me the type of frames of brood we're putting in that box I just want to take a picture of it you have this nice sealed brood I can see some areas beginning to hatch it's the perfect frame to boost a smaller Colony with the other one looks just like it I guess yeah yeah that's good stuff to take away from a colony that's getting too big and give two one that's too small all right thank you John John tells me he's going to buy that house out there that's John's future house that's a castle that's what that is we didn't have too many that had cells in this yard just a few but we did something weird we made triples out of them each third has a cell in it we use double screen boards you can see ones facing forward ones got the entrance facing backwards same with that stack and back over there we did the same thing so being creative there's a beautiful waterfall behind those trees I don't know if the camera is going to pick it up it's a real long High waterfall we're really close to the North Carolina line right here we're in Dillard Georgia okay this is going to be interesting we were here a little over a week ago and gave these bees an apiguard treatment to try to keep them under control keep them from building swarm cells kind of sort of shut the clean down a little bit it's going to be interesting to see if it worked very well I'll tell you what I'm not seeing in these things is all that drone brood between the top bars and the bottom bars of the upper box Yeah well yeah like that last time we were here every colony was loaded with it and this one obviously has some that uh let's see if this thing's what kind of brood they got I want to see if they shut down after the APA guard okay that comb's full of larvae shut them down I didn't shut them down very long we've got all kinds of larva here it seems to have had the effect we were looking for in that we're not seeing any swarm cells at all so I guess it was worth the trouble okay we were in here a little over a week ago gave him an ape a guard treatment to try to keep them under control till we could get back and split them and it seemed to work there's good evidence that most of the colonies either shut down completely momentarily just for a day or two or definitely cut back a lot of the Drone brood that was in between the boxes is no longer there it seems like they cleared it out no form sales at all in this yard today although some of these callings are definitely strong enough to have wanted to do it and I think that generally worked plus we got a little bit of a mic treatment in there too okay to start with this feels like cheating that they're not supposed to be this easy okay John cut it above his hand all right nice little handle right there yep you ready I'm ready okay it doesn't get much easier than that just leave the whole branch no Shake It Off shake it off here perfect and fill the frames and again you need a comb in there a baked comb to help keep them in there okay not a very big swarm here John just put it on that dead spot over there perfect I'm sure we'll figure out which one it came out of [Music] in our shop is about a quarter mile that way look at all that pollen we went from starving for pollen to plugged up with pollen and what six days or something fast