Demareeing
The Demaree method is not just a method of manipulating
bees, but is a system that can be used for swarm reduction or queen
replacement or producing nucleii. Any or all of these options are
available at the same time.
Wedmore was a big proponent of this system, which was first
described by George Demaree in an article in the American Bee Journal
in 1884. I had long been aware of the ideas, but had not tried them
when a friend of mine, Bob Boone, (a fellow bee equipment
manufacturer) enthused over all of the possibilities and I resolved
to try it for myself.
The method and Wedmore's variations on it have been the
basis of my beekeeping up until I no nonger had the physical strength
to do the lifting involved.
The principle behind the Demaree method is the
rearrangement of a colony, one one site, in such a way as to separate
the queen and foraging force from the brood and nurse bees. That is
about the simplest way of stating it, but the permutations of
different ways of doing it are enormous.
My way of doing it...
If I found queencells during a
routine inspection I would shift the open brood box to one side and
cover it with a cloth.
Locate a spare broodbox with foundation or drawn comb (I used to store
several in each apiary so that they were always available) I would
also have spares in the van if none were already stacked up. This
spare box minus it's centre comb was placed on the original
floorboard.
Run through the original box and find the queen, take her and the
frame she was found on and place it in the centre of the new box,
removing any queencells that are on that frame, as you do so.
Put the queen excluder on this new box and then the supers
(add another super if thought prudent at the time). Place an
additional queen excluder over the supers.
Returning to the original box, move the combs to one side of the box
and fill the empty space at one side with the odd drawn comb that
was removed to make the gap. This box now goes on top of the
topmost queen excluder.
Fit crownboard and roof and the job is done.
The original Demaree method actually allowed the bees to
swarm, which required that they be collected (a great deal of
un-necessary work and a risk of losing the bees completely). After
some trials it was decided to treat the colonies as if they had
swarmed even if they were making no swarm preparations.
This regimental treatment of all colonies was aimed at
suppressing swarming. and was totally succesful for a period of
14 to 21 days. To further extend the non swarming period, the queen
excluders could be removed allowing the original queen full use of
the combs. This gave another 14 to 21 days with about 90% chance of
swarm suppression.
Requeening a honey production hive.This is probably the
most common useage of the method and to be true to the originators
ideas you should do this upon finding queencells. In practice I used
to carry out the manoeuvre on all colonies in an apiary if I found
queencells, that I had not anticipated, in any hive in that apiary.
I always had spare boxes with mixture of drawn comb and frames
of foundation available either in the back of the van or sealed up,
stacked on hive stands, in the apiaries concerned. The supers were
already off, the brood box was placed on one side and a fresh box
placed on the original floor. The central comb was removed from the
new box and retained for later. The original brood box was searched
and the queen and the frame that she was found on were placed in the
central gap in the new box. A fresh queen excluder was placed on this
new box the original supers replaced. The original queen excluder was
placed on the supers and the brood box with the occupied frames was
placed on this. The frames being pushed together to remove the gap
that the queen's frame left and the spare comb placed in the outside
position. Crown board and roof on the top of the stack and our job is
finished. This all takes less time than it took for me to type the
description.
Producing two stocks from one... By introducing a
split board instead of the
uppermost queen exluder, a few days later.
Producing two, three or four nucs, whilst still producing
some honey.
Wedmore 4 square boards
separate cover boards (coverboards?)
Box with dovetail grooves (draw up plywood version)
Repopulating "baby" nucs with young bees after the existing
ones are too old for our purpose.
Divided 5 frame nucs {link to nucs}
wedmore 4 square type split board with mesh removed, newspaper and
full sized Herzog grid
Why it works.
Generated... 20 October 2001
Revised... 07 February 2002
