Pagden Method - Artificial Swarm
- Extra equipment required:
- Hive with brood box
- Brood frames with foundation or drawn comb
- Method
-
Busy hive with dirty comb - Put roof and supers to one side.
- Move rest of busy hive to one side.
-
Busy hive moved to one side - Put new hive on stand in place of removed busy hive.
- Find queen in busy hive.
- Check there are no queen cells on her frame.
- If there are queen cells move queen to another frame.
- Place that frame in middle of new hive.
-
Queen moved - Fill rest of new brood box with new brood frames.
- Place queen excluder onto new brood box.
- Place supers from busy hive onto new hive.
- Place roof and crown board from busy hive on the new hive.
-
Almost finished - Examine the busy hive
- Remove all sealed queen cells
- Remove all but two unsealed queen cells containing larvae.
- Place roof and crown board on the "was busy" hive.
-
Finished - Advantages
- All the flying bees return to the new hive.
- All the nurse bees are with the brood in the original hive.
- You have persuaded the bees they swarmed - but you have lost none.
- You have twice as many colonies.
- Disadvantages
- You need to have a spare hive.
- You need space in the apiary for the hive.
- You have one hive which has to pause before new queen starts to lay.
- Heddon Method
- A variation on the Pagden Method.
- Follow the Pageden method as above.
- After a week move the original hive to the other side of the new hive.
- Bees coming back to the missing original hive.
- The returning bees go into the new hive.
- The new hive has more flying bees.
- The original busy hive is now even less busy.