Tricks & Tips
Artificial swarms
- If you make an artificial swarm using a full box of foundation on the original site and then replace the supers on the artificial swarm, the bees will have no empty cells in the brood box to store pollen - so they will put it in the first super. This can be avoided by using some empty drawn comb in the brood box.
- Make sure that the parent colony has some empty super space - if you do not, then the brood box will fill with honey and the new queen will have nowhere to lay. If this happens, add an empty super or two and damage the cappings of the honey in the brood box - the bees will move it upstairs very quickly.
