Brace yourself

My favoured swarm control involves using the Demaree method, a vertical split of the queen and foragers to the lower brood box, leaving the brood and nurse bees above the queen excluder. After three weeks all the brood in the upper box will have emerged and the box needs to be removed – either to melt out the wax from old comb, or to reuse the drawn comb. If you don’t remove the upper brood box the bees will fill it with nectar if there’s any sort of flow.

Brace comb on underside of clearer board

Rather than shake bees out I use a clearer board under the upper brood box when I want to remove it. This only needs to be in place overnight to work. The picture above shows what happens if you fail to remove it during a good flow. Five days later the space is filled with brace comb packed with nectar. The top bars of the upper super were welded firmly to the underside of the clear board.

What a mess

This is what happens when work gets in the way of beekeeping.