Chat with Dr. Tibor Szabo

This morning I phoned Dr. Tibor Szabo, from whom we bought our bees, and asked him whether it would be better to re-queen our "red" swarmed hive, or to let the bees raise their own queen? He said:

1. better to let the bees raise their own queen now; great difficulty finding the home-raised queen(s) at this time;

2. one advantage of a swarm is, all the mites go away with the bees, so the mite burden is greatly reduced;

3. bees do not like to "go up" and they probably got so crowded that they "just had to swarm"; that the weaker hive swarmed has to do with temperament by contrast to the "yellow" hive which went up easily and is now busily working on its second honey super;

4. honey production is good for us, but not "good for the bees"; it's better for the bees to swarm;

5. the swarmed hive will lose ten days in brood production;

6. and his first remark will come last here: "but we have had such poor weather!" That's interesting: I have been enjoying this quasi-English spring/summer weather! So have the peonies, and--except for the heavy rain (a Chinese emperor required that each blooming peony have a personal servant to stand over it with an umbrella in the instance of rain)--they've had long bloom times.

In retrospect, since the decision to swarm is made three weeks before the swarm is accomplished, perhaps they should have received their second brood supers earlier? OTOH, the "red" hive was weaker, and therefore less crowded, and second-year queens are "almost programmed to swarm" so perhaps the swarm was inevitable? Inevitable or not, if I could turn back the clock, would give the second brood super three weeks earlier and right away zoom the time-clock forward to assess the result.