Garry Reeves Bees

Garry co-presents at february SIBA meeting

Garry Reeves and Jeff Montag put on a great presentation at the February SIBA meeting. They covered the topic of swarm control specifically for honey production. The general idea is arranging your boxes into a pre-flow configuration of open/drawn comb in the bottom box with the queen. Then, a queen excluder above it and all of the brood frames in the top box.

Each hive inspection has you pulling brood frames out of the bottom and placing them above the queen excluder (always making sure there is enough space for the queen to lay eggs,) then replacing the removed brood frames with open/drawn comb or foundation. There’s some more management to it that requires a strict regimen of visiting your hives at regular intervals and ensuring no queen cells make it above the excluder. See everyone in March!