Guilfordbeekeepers.org

Between making splits and collecting swarms these past several days, I am officially out of room for more colonies (so says my wife!). With some of my remaining strong colonies, I'm using the Demaree method for the first time to make vertical splits. Not excited about eventually having a deep honey super to lift off the top and deal with, but thought it was worth experimenting to try and prevent swarming and make a lot of honey.

if anyone has experience trying this around here, let me know what you've learned - good and bad!

I'm playing with a modified Demaree hive now. My queen, capped brood, and some feed/open comb went below the excluder. I added an Imirie shim above the excluder. Next came a super of honey, and then the super of uncapped brood. I went in at day 7 and day 10 and knocked down any queen cells started in the open brood above the excluder. The THEORY behind this is to prevent swarming, keep the growing brood, and collect a larger honey crop above the excluder. Given my experience with bees, the bees in the bottom will have gone into swarm mode any way. I'll probably check later today.

I set up Demaree splits on 7 of my colonies, and apparently just in time as ALL were soon to swarm. I had to remind myself to find my marked queens first before knocking down the swarm cells just in case they had already taken off! I'll now go back in 7-8 days to cut out all of the emergency queen cells they build in the brood chamber I've moved to the very top above an excluder and two medium honey supers.

My main question now will be whether or not I'll need to remove more brood frames from the bottom in the next few weeks, or if they'll be too distracted by the flow to consider swarming. As I learned the past couple of seasons, my bees WILL swarm in the middle of the main flow, despite my best efforts...