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Swarming

4 bytes removed, 12:30, 31 October 2016
Nordic bees exhibit swarming behavior and when they begin to swarm, it is very hard to stop. The most common way to handle a swarming colony, is the so-called controlled swarming method. This means that the bees will be able to perform their natural swarming behavior, but the beekeeper will be able to control the swarm’s location. The most common way to do this is to split the swarming colony so that the old queen from the swarming hive is placed into a new nucleus. The swarming hive will grow a new queen from either existing swarm queen cells or a newly bred queen cell.
If the all the new queens are continuously produced from swarm queen cells, selection will lead to a high swarming tendency in all bee colonies in the course of a few years. As such, it is recommended that the new swarm cell queen should be changed to a bred queen later in summer.
The first stimulus in the year for swarming is the lack of space for egg laying; when for example the egg laying area is blocked by extra winter feed or spring honey.