Does anyone here know whether bees will still swarm if they have plenty of room in their hive? I'd like to try Top Bar Hives this year and am wondering just how big I should make them. So what triggers swarming? Is it too little room in the brood chamber? Too much honey? Too little free space in the hive overall?

Thanks for the info!

-- Laura Jensen (lauraj@seedlaw.com), January 22, 2001

Answers

can be any number of things. Most common are, overcrowding,, weak queen, too many predators,ect,, or sometimes they swarm for no apparrent reason, just something natural that happens. Swarms occur so the bees can multiply,, just natures way.

-- Stan (sopal@net-port.com), January 22, 2001.

It has been awhile since I worked with bees, my dad had many hives before he passed away here is what I can remember. They will not swarm with out more than one queen the queens will fight, one either dies or leaves. Age contribues more than other factors,if the hive is "crowded" you are not takeing proper care of them, you should chech the frames fairly often when the frames look full honey/eggs add a new box to the top or spit the hive, by taking away a few frames honey and eggs [with the queen] to a new hive the worker bees on the frames will stay with their queen the now queen-less hive will feed grubs to make new queens at that point watch for the new queens to hatch or they will fight and /or swarm. the new queens will hatch at about the same time, so check often you could pull out unwanted queen cells with tweesers. I think I would leave just two and let them fight so the stronger one would remain,

-- Thumper (slrldr@aol.com), January 22, 2001.

Last spring I installed five new packages in new equipment. All the hives were identical and the packages all came from the same place at the same time. I treated all the hives exactly the same, but one swarmed twice during the summer and gave me no harvest. The only variation was their position in relation to the other colonies, but they can't all be in the same spot.

-- Skip Walton (sundaycreek@gnrac.net), January 23, 2001.

As far as how big to make your TBH..try 30 frames of width. If at some point you want it to bee smaller, slide a piece pf board, the same dimensions as the interior measurement, thus creating a false wall. www.beesource.com & http://www.gsu.edu/~biojdsx/main.htm

-- Laura (LauraLeekis@home.com), January 23, 2001.

Just a quick note on the hive that swarmed 2 times in one summer, the original queen probably died,seems I remember that the cemical scent that triggers the workers to feed for a queen can linger on the frames, not for shure though.

-- Thumper (slrldr@aol.com), January 24, 2001.