Found Queen Cells? Swarm Control the Tony Jefferson Way

The talk was going to be called “Oh, I found queen cells”. The organisers weren’t sure how to fit that on a poster, but it’s what the whole thing is about. Tony Jefferson keeps his bees in Whitby, and in this video he explains how he runs his colonies, how he deals with swarming, and what he does the moment he lifts a box and sees cells hanging off the frames.

Tony is honest from the start. He’ll lose the odd swarm like the rest of us, because you plan weekly inspections and then the weather doesn’t play ball. Retirement was meant to make it easier. It hasn’t, as anyone who’s retired will tell you.

Wintering on a single brood box under a glass quilt

Every colony goes into winter on one brood box with a glass quilt and some insulation on top. The twist is that Tony winters them inside WBC hives. A National brood box fits inside a WBC, and the cheapest way in is second quality brood boxes and supers, which cost less than WBC brood boxes and lifts. In summer the Nationals come back out. Living in windy Whitby, he likes the extra protection of a double walled hive.

The glass quilt earns its keep. It costs a few quid more than a wooden crown board, and you can watch the colony build up without disturbing it. Wild comb on the underside tells you a hive needs a super before you’ve opened a thing, so you arrive with the right kit.

Starting the season late, and why that’s fine

Tony doesn’t like starting inspections early. Easter is about right, weather permitting. A few warm days in March tempt most beekeepers in, but you’ll probably do more harm than good. Once the year gets going it’s busy anyway, so why start it sooner?

If a colony is building well, he puts a brood extension over the glass quilt. The bees can move up through the hole into the extra box on a warm day and drop back down when it cools. It buys time.

Brood and a half, and checking for swarm cells quickly

Tony is a big fan of brood and a half. A brood box and a super do the job of brood rearing, and it makes swarm checks simple. With a full 14 by 12 brood box you’d be going through every frame. With his set up he tips the box up and looks at the underside of the frames, where any swarm cells will be hanging. It’s quick enough that he can do 50 colonies in a couple of hours.

While he’s lifting, he’s judging the weight. A heavy box means honey, so it needs another box on.

Give the queen room

He ignores the old advice not to spread brood. If you want the queen laying, give her space to lay. Tony adds a second box underneath (under supering), with every other frame foundation and the rest drawn comb. The wax builders get a job, the queen gets room, and both help deter swarming.

There’s no queen excluder on his hives as a routine. His dad’s saying was that the best place for a queen excluder is on a nail in the shed. In nature, an arch of sealed honey does the same job. A queen confined to one National brood box might manage about 1,200 eggs a day. On brood and a half she can do closer to 2,000, and Tony is in the business of making bees. Honey comes by accident.

By early May he wants every colony on at least brood and a half. A colony that isn’t getting there is probably headed by an old queen, or has a high varroa load. It gets one treatment. If it still doesn’t build, he lets it go rather than propping it up with frames of brood from other hives.

A few habits worth stealing

Go easy with the smoker, but always have it lit and ready. Smoking the entrance out of habit just sends the bees to gorge on open honey at the top, and then you smoke them again when you open up.

When you’re hunting for a queen, use a cover cloth. Tony’s wash in the washing machine, so disease risk isn’t the worry people make it out to be. And skip taking out the first frame as a rule. It’s often stuck to the wall of the box, so you roll bees against the wood. The second or third frame in, usually the pollen frame, comes out much more easily. You’ll often find the queen on the last but one frame, because she’s been nudged along by the smoke and the dark.

What swarming bees actually look like

Tony makes a point that shapes everything else. A swarm isn’t all flying bees. It needs bees of all ages, nurse bees and wax builders as well as foragers, though with a good number of flyers to bring in income at the new site. A swarm can’t take brood with it, and a colony that goes broodless switches off the urge to swarm. That’s the heart of an artificial swarm.

Tony’s artificial swarm

When he finds queen cells, he takes the box off and sets it to one side. He finds the queen if he can, and puts her in a new box on the old site, ideally full of drawn comb. The flying bees return to that spot, so they go in with her. No brood goes in. He then shakes a couple of frames of bees from the old box into the new one so there are bees of all ages.

He’s tried the opposite. When he looked after a neighbour’s bees, he split them into nucs with queens and brood and moved them to another apiary. The flying bees went with them, and the next day the nucs were hanging on the fence like bunches of grapes. Brood plus flyers keeps the swarm impulse alive.

Even if he hasn’t found the queen, it’s not a disaster. He knows which frames carry cells, and the colony still ends up in the right state.

What to do with the queen cells

The box left behind has queen cells and young bees but no flyers, so it can’t cast. If you don’t want to increase, cut the cells down to one or two. If you do, Tony makes nucs.

His first nuc is often a super or a cut down brood extension with the cells hanging below, set on top of another colony over a covered glass quilt, so it borrows the heat. One handy tip: buy third quality commercial brood boxes and cut them into thirds, and you get three nuc boxes from one. Once a queen is laying, the nuc can be moved to another apiary.

He also uses a homemade twin stock, a second quality brood box split with a division board into two five frame nucs. He cuts slots in the board so both sides share a smell, which makes it easy to unite them again later. Five frames suit him better than three, where a laying queen can get egg bound. If one queen doesn’t mate, he just recombines.

Whichever route you take, you’ll end up with at least two colonies for a while. You can’t knock cells down forever. The day you stop, the colony swarms.

Why a swarm from a big colony is smaller than you’d think

A colony packed with brood needs a lot of bees to look after it, so the swarm that leaves is small. The big prime swarms come from colonies with little brood. So if Tony misses cells and loses a swarm, he isn’t too upset. He’s lost two weeks of old flying bees and a handful of young ones. Most of the colony is still there.

Raising queens the lazy, natural way

Tony’s queen rearing is simple. He picks a good colony, pushes the queen into the bottom box, and puts an excluder on so she’s restricted there. Congested, the bees raise cells, and Tony believes cells raised that way are better fed than ones from a cell bar. He then makes up nucs from them. It gives him 20 or 30 nucs and enough queens to requeen his apiaries every two years. Grafting would leave him with 24 queen cells and nowhere to put them.

He also sets up at least three colonies in each apiary with two frames of drone comb to breed drones through summer.

Bait hives and old comb

Spare gear stays set up as empty hives across the district, with mouse guards on. Old black combs from your comb change make the best swarm lures, as do old hives, because a new cedar box smells wrong to a scout bee. Visit them regularly. Don’t leave bees on old comb for long, and put in a few empty frames so the bees build their own if you forget.

Associations that put out bait hives also get fewer calls to climb ladders for swarms.

Heather honey, loosener and pressing cappings

Towards the end of the talk Tony moves on to heather. He keeps shallow combs that have been through two or three brood cycles and gone nicely propolised, because they stand up to a heather loosener far better than virgin comb. He spins heather out rather than pressing it, but he does press his cappings, and reckons it gives him an extra half bucket of honey from nine supers.

From bee owner to beekeeper

His closing thought is a good one. You’ve moved from being a bee owner to a beekeeper when you can look at a colony and decide you don’t need to open it today. Bees aren’t pets. Treat them with respect, think about what they’d do in nature, and when things go wrong, go back to that.

Frequently asked questions

What should I do if I find queen cells?

Tony makes an artificial swarm. He puts the queen and the flying bees in a new box on the old site with some young bees shaken in, and no brood. The old box, with the queen cells, moves away and can become a nuc.

Does Tony Jefferson use queen excluders?

Not routinely. He relies on the arch of sealed honey as a natural excluder and uses an excluder only when congesting a colony to raise queen cells.

When does he start spring inspections?

Around Easter, depending on the weather.

Why a glass quilt?

It lets him see the colony building up, spot comb on the underside that says a super is needed, and plan the visit without opening the hive.