Do Queens Lay in Winter?
2025-04-12
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Written by : Suzanne Wiebe
One of the most overlooked aspects of beekeeping is that we forget the purpose of a hive. It is not to produce honey, or vast amounts of extra honey.
The purpose of a hive is to reproduce. Like all life forms. For Bees, reproduction happens in the shape of a swarm.
No beekeeper wants to see their bees swarm. Some beekeepers claim that they have created bees that are less likely to swarm.
We have bought them in the past, and only found that the queens lay less, and swarm later in the year.
Once you see an egg inside a queen cup, you can assume that your bees are have decided to swarm. You will not be able to prevent it.
That is why it is important to prevent a swarm early. The #1 way to do this is to trick the queen into believing her hive hasn’t reached a population of 40000 bees.
Feel free to download the above calendar. Randy Oliver has a similar one on his page First year beekeeping – Scientific Beekeeping
I took the picture to the right from that page. We do not have the same flora and fauna in Ontario, but what I want to highlight is that the swarming happens BEFORE the main honey flow.
In 2025, one beekeeper reported a swarm in April. Yes! April. If you look at Randy Oliver’s map, you will notice that the swarm happens 1 month before the flow starts. Our flow starts in Mid May, which means we start building up our hives late April.
Swarm season starts soon as the nights are warmer, and you notice the queen laying full frames of brood. Remember, she is not laying all that brood to make honey. She is laying all that brood to make swarms!
Flip Boxes
The oldest method of swarm prevention is to put the bottom brood box on top, and the top brood box on the bottom.
Demeree
Our new method of preventing swarms is to use the demeree method. Youtube.com is full of videos showing this method.
Checkerboard
When the weather is warmer you can split the brood by putting empty frames in between the frames with brood on them.
Making Nucs
My favorite is to make nucs. Just remove 1 – 2 frames out of each hive. If there are eggs in the brood, then the nurse bees will make a new queen.
What to do if it is too late and your bees are ready to swarm?
There is nothing you can do. The only thing that works is to divide the bees into 3 nucs. Hopefully you will be able to keep one of the nucs. Do not put much brood with the queen. Only 1 frame of capped. If you are lucky, the queen will think that she has already swarmed and bee happy. The other two nucs might be too busy making new queens to think about swarming.
Like everything in nature, the only 100% guaranteed cure for a problem is prevention.
The only cure for swarming is to prevent the bees from thinking that the hive is strong enough to start another colony.
The old queen will leave with the swarm, usually the same time the first queen cell is capped.
This might repeat itself two or three times.
If your hive swarms, even once in a season, you will not have enough bees to make a good honey crop.
Do the best you can. Make notes, and next year, start your swarm prevention 2 weeks earlier.
Feel free to post your stories about swarms, and pictures, in the comment section. I like to hear from everyone.
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