[BKeeper]

I am new to your list.  I have been a beekeeper for long enough now to start making mistakes!

A couple of years ago there was some correspondence about using the Snelgrove board and which elicited  very detailed  and helpful replies.

I live in the Isle of Man and we have a native honeybee that is very dark in colour.  It is almost impossible to spot a queen.  Thus any swarm control method that says "first find the queen on her comb" is courting failure.

I have used the Snelgrove method for many years.  I have to proceed on the basis that the queen cannot be found and consequently all the bees are brushed/shaken in to the bottom box with one comb of brood in all stages.

What I cannot now remember is the period of time that must elapse to allow the nurse bees to come back up to the top box of remaining brood and before the Snelgrove board is put in place.

Can anyone assist me?

[P6te]

Hi,

When I use the Snelgrove method my starting point is a double brood chamber so its a little different .... and I'd rely on finding the queen or separating the boxes and then a couple of days later establish where she is laying.

However .... in answer to your question, as with so may things with bee keeping it is not an exact science. Remember that as soon as the queen starts laying there will be a need for nurse bees so some will be with the queen whatever your timing. I would be inclined to give them 48 hours to sort themselves out and then separate with the Snelgrove board.

Pete

[BKeeper]

Thanks very much for that Pete.  I should have said that I use Langstroth hives.  Consequently they are run on single brood boxes until the moment of implementing the  Snelgrove method.

[cloddopper]

Why do you need to find the queen & faff about with a Snellgrove board ?.

Finding eggs , larvae and normal sealed brood is much easier.
So is slipping a new young queen taken from a re-queening nuc & putting her in a queen cage into the hive with a few loyal attendants.

The stronger usually younger queen sends out the death sentence to the weaker queen within a few hours and then you have a new champion the next day  . 

That's why the use of the Snellgrove idea is almost history

[P6te]

Why do you need to find the queen & faff about with a Snellgrove board ?.

Finding eggs , larvae and normal sealed brood is much easier.
So is slipping a new young queen taken from a re-queening nuc & putting her in a queen cage into the hive with a few loyal attendants.

The stronger usually younger queen sends out the death sentence to the weaker queen within a few hours and then you have a new champion the next day  . 

That's why the use of the Snellgrove idea is almost history

Isn't this half the trouble now .... very few people have the time and patience to operate effective swarm control measures. Snelgroving does take time and patience but it is effective to control swarming, gives strong colonies when nectar is flowing and gives the option of re-queening at the end of the season and ensures hives go into winter as a strong colony.

[cloddopper]

I never had any great probs in my 100 or so hives , having almost one nuc box for each hive allows  a simple  reproduction of a queen and proven fertility  . Slipping  the nuc's egg filled & sealed combs into the hive it came from and taking out the six  frames that were either not filled with stores & brood was part of th  cycle of inspection so not much effort .
 Some times I noticed the old queen and snuff her out  but most times I just added the nuc's frames  & let the hive sort it's self out over a day or so .
 If I was after a double brood I put a times news sheet across the bottom QE , poke a few holes in it with my hive tool and sit the top brood box on it with the neu'c frames and some drawn frames then add anothe QE to stop egg laying in the supers .

 If a hive was strong I'd often  take the QE out , add a super and replace the QE on top to give a QE .

 I was often told that Bees generally only swarm  if there is not enough space for the queen to lay her eggs because the hive is so full of bees.  Not sure if it is true & temperature & humidity related or a pheromone response . In this situation she'd swarm before a new queen cell hatched .

Or They swarm as a result of , if the queen is in serious decline and the hive decided it was time to terminate her and raise a new queen or three etc. then the  prime swarming & subsequent diminishing sized swarms would occur if the hive was left unattended .

 Come winter I' bring the hives back from the field and unite two broods into one hive again using the paper method then use " Ceretain " ( sp ) to stink the hive & my blower  to drive  bees down from the top brood box a few days later .
 Once the cleanse was done I'd put the freed up combs in a special made case that would hold 24 brood combs  ( it was fitted with four  bee escapes  ) & leave it by the sorted hive on the honey barrow .
It soon became evident if the queen remained in the frames in the clearing box as the bees would cluster all over it.   Most times I got it right first time , but if I'd got it wrong it was a simple case of changing the frames over back into the brood box & rebuild the hive again .
 In the meantime I would usually  be working other hives in the wintering apairy.

 My feeding regime  was industrial ...with a 3 inch deep  sealed  ..hopefully leak proof tray feeder with a central 19 mm feed access hole on each hive .  They at sat on the supers or brood box with a crown board on top that had four  bee escapes in it .  Pumping a modified sugar solution  in the feeders via a hose from th liquid sugar tank on the bee trailer .
 
 I was told by many of the smaller  keepers that I'd started to feed too early, often in the first fortnight of August if the nectar & pollen was scarce .
Very few of my hives died from over winter starvation trailer or because the cluster was too small to keep heat enough to move around the frames for stores.