With the warmer weather coming in the next few days, ample forage and growing colonies, the threat of swarming looms ever larger!

Please ensure that you are inspecting your colonies regularly for swarming activity (e.g. every 5 days for unclipped queens) and do not imagine that by merely cutting out any queen cells you will solve the problem.  You need to take the correct remedial action to avoid losing your queen and half of your bees!!

We therefore recommend that you read the PBKA’s leaflets for some ways of dealing with it:

Simplified Artificial Swarm Guide

and

Artificial Swarm without finding the Queen