Cutting back on population size after main flow

[specialkayme]

Past few years I've had some crazy horrible issues with robbing. Strong colonies would overtake weaker ones, which usually resulted in a domino affect, usually happening during our nectar dearth in July. It gets so bad that some years I've lost 60% of my hives in the summer. In my opinion, this was likely the result of a combination of poor varroa management (creating weaker hives, which then spread more varroa causing more problems) and too many hives at each location. I have a new, more aggressive varroa strategy and more outyards to spread my hives at. So that should help.

But, I was talking to a commercial beekeeper in the Midwest about my issues. He asked me how strong my hives were once the nectar flow was over. I told him some were double deeps, but most I cut down to singles doing splits. So probably 7 or 8 brood frames heading into the dearth. He told me these hives were crazy strong going into a dearth, and that was probably the main cause of my problems. As some hives were just too strong, with no nectar they started looking for something else to do, and ended up preying on the weaker hives. He suggested I cut my hives down, starting around June 1 after the main flow is over, to about 4 or 5 brood frames.

I've never heard, or read about anyone making hives weaker after a main honey flow as a management practice. I've heard of making splits after the main flow, but for increase or sale, not as a management strategy to prevent robbing issues.

Is anyone else doing this as a routine matter?

[Wally]

Most commercial keeps I know pick their hives out of pollination in the middle of a hot day so the foragers are mostly out flying. One of the reasons is to eliminate a lot of loafing foragers when in the home yards. They rob less, and go through less stores during the dearth, or when being fed in the home yard. Then they leave a few weak hives for a few days for the lost foragers to take up with, thus strengthening them before picking them up.

[specialkayme]

I've heard of commercial beekeepers doing the same, but I've never heard of them cutting down production colonies to X frames of bees in order to accomplish the same thing.

[Wally]

That would be too time consuming with 3000 hives, when it can be done with timing only, no effort.

[specialkayme]

Good point. Didn't think of that.

[mike91553]

So how could be do this without moving our hives or splitting.

[specialkayme]

I believe the goal is to cut back on colony's population size post flow. In order to do that, you have to either:

1. Lose a large percentage of the foragers;
2. Remove a good amount of brood;
3. Straight up kill some bees; or
4. Maintain smaller populations to start with.

The 4th option will reduce your honey yield, so is out.
Commercial operators go with option #1.
It was suggested to me to do option #2.
Option #3 seems just wasteful.

In using option #2, I guess you don't have to make splits with the removed brood frames, but I don't know what else you would do with them.

So to answer your question Mike, I don't think you can do it without moving or splitting.

[Bee_Local]

Could you move brood frames from stronger hives weaker hives.

-or-

Move hives to equalize foragers by switching hive placements.

A lot of work, but might work for us backyard and little guys.

[specialkayme]

The goal, as was explained to me, was not just to equalize the populations of the various hives. It was to cut back on the population size of all of the hives, and do so in an equal proportion.

If you have a hive that has 12 brood frames and another that has 8, you can move brood from the strong to the weak and have two hives that have 10 frames of brood each. But heading into a dearth, 10 frames of brood is still too much (according to the person I talked to), with 5 or 6 frames of brood being ideal. So moving from a strong to a weak might equalize the brood, but doesn't serve the purpose of getting "rid" of the extra "flow workers" that no longer have anything to do now that they're in a dearth.

The same would hold true for moving hive locations to equalize the work force.

[Jacobs]

Varroa mites usually work for me!

[mike91553]

This sounds awful and I never thought of it before this discussion but it might get rid of mites and cut back on population.

Too time consuming for many hives but what if you freeze all the brood frames and then put it back for them to clean out and start over. I doubt I would try it but has this been tried before?

[Jacobs]

Now that Mike mentioned it, a less drastic method might be to use one of those larger queen introduction/brood interruption cages. Catch the queen and confine her in the hive for a period of time and repeat. This would leave the hive queenright, but slow brood production. This would be labor intensive and I don't know what the upper limit for a single confinement period would be.

If you can get Carniolan or Russian genetics, don't those tend to reduce populations when there is a reduced amount of nectar? Swarm management for those that overwinter might be a bigger challenge than population reduction after the flow for these types of bees.