May 2026
May – Please Don’t Go Darlings by Alan Riach
The principle behind artificial swarming is to consider the bee colony as comprising three entities: the queen, the brood, and the flying foragers. Separating any one of these from the other two will prevent swarming. The Pagden method separates the brood from the queen and flying foragers.
There are several ways of artificial swarming. See EMBA Download here.
Whichever one you use, ensure that you follow through with all the required steps. This is particularly important if you use the Nucleus method, whereby the queen is separated from the brood and flying foragers. In this instance, the queen is placed in a Nucleus box containing a frame of brood, some frames of stores, some drawn comb, and some young bees. The parent hive is left with ONE queen cell – mark its location with a drawing pin on the top bar and treat that frame very carefully as the developing queen larva is only held onto the pool of royal jelly by surface tension. You MUST then go through the hive 6 days later, as the bees will have built lots of new queen cells on eggs and on young larvae. All of these must be destroyed, leaving ONLY your originally chosen cell. If you miss a second cell (usually a scrubby little entity hidden in the corner of a frame), you will guarantee a subsequent swarm when the first of the two subsequent queens emerges. If your chosen queen is first to emerge, she will be sent off with the prime swarm – you will be left with the poor queen emerging from that scrubby little hidden cell. The reason for swarming in this case is that the strong parent hive is still of the opinion that it can throw off a swarm. This is the danger associated with the Nuc artificial swarming method.
Even after Pagdening, the bees occasionally continue to produce queen cells. This may be superseded due to a weak queen, but more likely a lack of space. If your colony is large during Pagdening and covers all frames on the super, then, as well as the norm of putting the super back on the artificial swarm, add another one. If they are well on the way to swarming (lots of unsealed, advanced queen cells) when you Pagden, then put a queen excluder under the broodbox of the artificial swarm. This will prevent the queen from exiting with the swarm should they attempt to. Check a week later. If there are sealed queen cells, knock them down, check a week later, if there are new sealed cells, knock them down. After a 3rd check if there are still sealed cells, that is, they have not settled down, then take out the queen and put her in a Nuc (the Nuc method), but remember only leave ONE queen cell in the artificial swarm colony.
If you have missed a swarming and find a much-reduced colony (usual first signs are few bees in the super) with lots of queen cells, some sealed, some open, then reduce to one queen cell (preferably an open one with a nice fat grub therein, as at least you know that is a good one). This will prevent the bees from throwing off a cast swarm once the first queen emerges. Don’t panic and knock down all cells, as without a queen or larvae under 3 days old, they can’t create a new queen.
Some of you may be inserting new brood frames with foundation in various manipulations and rescued swarms in particular are very keen to draw comb. So, where to insert. If you are removing some old frames in a normal expanding brood nest, you will usually find, on the outside, there are frames of sealed honey, then a frame with some honey and some pollen, then the first frame of brood. This pattern will be repeated on the other side of the brood nest. The best place to put the foundation is between the pollen frame and the first frame of brood, because the bees are already heating this area and you are not splitting the brood nest and forcing the bees to spread their warmth. Warmth is needed for comb drawing as the wax being manipulated has to be kept at quite a high temperature. A slowly expanding nucleus colony should be given one frame of foundation at a time; a rapidly expanding full-size colony can handle two. Once drawn and the queen is laying in the newly drawn comb, the process can be repeated. Throughout the season, identify the most decrepit frames, mark them with a drawing pin and gradually move them towards the sides of the hive. The following spring, remove them – if they still have honey at that time, break the cappings and the bees should remove it. If you are starting with a new 5-frame nucleus inserted into a full-size brood box, use the above rules of inserting foundation close to the warm brood area. You can restrict the space using dummy boards, but do keep an eye on the colony’s progress and move the dummy boards out ahead of the advancing nest.
For a video clip of the Pagden method, see https://scottishbeekeepers.org.uk/bee-basics-videos/ and select How to prevent honeybees from swarming.
