Moving old hive to new one

[ArmucheeBee]

See, that's my problem!   I have no other hives to draw frames from.  But I stand to have 5 hives in the next month including this one.  Plus an article ran in the local paper today on me saving feral hives and doing removals so that should generate some more bees.  I get impatient, so I will probably go into the old box this week.  You should see the roaches under the top cover.  At least 100 big red ones, great fish bait!!

[gmcharlie]

seriously,  I would definatly try some beequick............   Might be the only real good way to get the queen......  got nothing to lose...

[RayMarler]

Just bee patient, those bees been there for years. They'll move up when they need/want to, it's still early in the year. You'll have more hives in the near future you can rob brood to bait this one with. You tearing into it because of impatience could very well be a bad move. What if the queen gets killed or injured? It sounds like this hive is mostly rotten, and tearing into it could be difficult and most stressful for the hive. Waiting until they decide to move to the upper box you've added would be the most stressless way of getting the broodnest. Then you could remove your new box with queen and broodnest and let them rob out the stores from the old hive.

[ArmucheeBee]

I used beequick to move some bees off an old comb in my OB.  They ended up killing the queen by heating her up too much.  That's $18 queen I had for 6 months.  I'll be patient.

[gmcharlie]

well if you have teh time,  thats great,  I got the impression you didn't and had to get it cleaned up.   Personaly i doubt the queen will move this year......  they seem to like old brood patterns.... 

I am curious as to how the beekquick led to her overheating????  not sure I understand that ??

[ccwonka]

One of my colleagues just gave me the paper with you on the cover!!!  AWESOME!!!!  Y agotta let me come with you on some of those so I can learn the skills!!!!

CC

[ArmucheeBee]

When bees become stressed they may actually attack the queen or may surround her to protect her.  I think in my case the latter happened.  beequick causes the bees to set off their alarm pheromone--it's a hive invasion.

[ArmucheeBee]

Final Post

I had time between swarm removals to take a look in this old hive on Wed.  I started chipping away termite riddled wood and propolis and was able to save 5 shallow frames with brood and then banded in another 2 deep frames.  The rest was junk.  Termites were even into the top bars.  The deep had a lot of empty space.  The queen was laying in the shallow and she had a really nice pattern.  So I was able to shake the bees into the new box and med., they had been using that entrance hole anyway so those flying knew right where to go.  Found the queen in deep climbing out!!!  She was huge, so I got her inside.  Whole thing took about 2.5 hours, but no stings and maybe they will be happy.  Thanks for all the advice.  The end.

[Irwin]

Glad to hear thing's went well for you :)

[JP]

When bees become stressed they may actually attack the queen or may surround her to protect her.  I think in my case the latter happened.  beequick causes the bees to set off their alarm pheromone--it's a hive invasion.

I don't know If I could prove your first point but from my experiences, when bees become stressed, they will ball the queen. I have seen this first hand doing removals.

I had one removal that was in a dormer over a window. I opened the dormer to expose the hive and right off saw bees balling a queen. Not sure why really, were they stressed or just 86ing that queen, but I did not find another one and thought it odd they were killing the only queen in this rather new hive. I chalked it up to stress.

I've seen them balling and stinging queens on other removals as well.

I have never experienced bees setting off alarm pheromone after applying beequick, I'm sorry but I have to disagree with your statement on this. I have used beequick on too many hives to remember, this is where my experience with beequick comes from and also from using it on fume boards to extract honey.


...JP

[gmcharlie]

When bees become stressed they may actually attack the queen or may surround her to protect her.  I think in my case the latter happened.  beequick causes the bees to set off their alarm pheromone--it's a hive invasion.

I don't know If I could prove your first point but from my experiences, when bees become stressed, they will ball the queen. I have seen this first hand doing removals.

I had one removal that was in a dormer over a window. I opened the dormer to expose the hive and right off saw bees balling a queen. Not sure why really, were they stressed or just 86ing that queen, but I did not find another one and thought it odd they were killing the only queen in this rather new hive. I chalked it up to stress.

I've seen them balling and stinging queens on other removals as well.

I have never experienced bees setting off alarm pheromone after applying beequick, I'm sorry but I have to disagree with your statement on this. I have used beequick on too many hives to remember, this is where my experience with beequick comes from and also from using it on fume boards to extract honey.


...JP

Very useful thoughts guys,  I much apreciate them...  I have a log I tried to do a move up on last year(we cut it and brought it home) with no sucsess... so this weekend it will be a cutout....  I avoided that so I wouldn't kill the queen....  I tried to outsmart them but no luck (go figure)    So I was gooing to try beequick  to remove the bulk,  and my beevac for the remainder........

If you happen to see them balling the queen,  is there any chance to rescue her>> or have they already stung her to death??

[ArmucheeBee]

Well, we all have different experiences don't we.  Just because mine is different does not mean it is wrong.  I used bee quick in the OB hive, the bees surrounded the queen and the queen fell out of the ball the next day and was dead.  There's nothing I can say except they were stressed by me using the beequick to move them off the comb.  If I had not used it maybe she would be alive today.  I know there a lot of people far more experienced here than me, but that is my observation. 

[JP]

Well, we all have different experiences don't we.  Just because mine is different does not mean it is wrong.  I used bee quick in the OB hive, the bees surrounded the queen and the queen fell out of the ball the next day and was dead.  There's nothing I can say except they were stressed by me using the beequick to move them off the comb.  If I had not used it maybe she would be alive today.  I know there a lot of people far more experienced here than me, but that is my observation. 

Stephen, I don't mean to say what you experienced never happened. It just sounds like the exception to the rule, that you unfortunately experienced.

Charlie, I may be wrong in doing this, but I still do it anyway, for fear they will kill her. When I see them balling her, I always go in and tear them apart and rescue her, at least I think I am.

Here's a pic of a queen that was being balled and I did pull her out and released her back into the hive, watched her run down between the frames and later on and in subsequent inspections found her alive and well.




...JP

[tlynn]

Brain

Do you manage for swarm control?  I want to be chem-free and close to natural possible.  How do you keep them from swarming and if you don't does that affect your honey yield?

Keeping the brood chamber open is the best way I know, but is only one of several things that have to be done at the same time to be successful in reducing swarming.  Also of note is that one of the trade off towards more hygenic bees is a greater swarming tendency, something to be aware of, the two seem to go hand in hand.

1.  Keep the brood chamber open, bees building comb in the brood chamber seldom swarm as the hive isn't "complete" until that happens and with a few exceptions (Russians, Casucasians, and crowding) bees are reluctant to swarm until the hive is "complete."  Complete is a brood nest not a storage comb condition. Storage comb has no bearing on swarming tendency other than providing expansion space.  The process of keeping the brood nest open is that in every box that has brood present the outer frames of brood must be moved outward and empty frames placed between the 2 outer frames of brood on each side of the brood chamber.  This is done by moving up the outside (storage) frame into a super.  So if the hive has 2 deeps with 6 frames of brood in each box Frames 1 & 10 are removed to the super (or harvested) frames 2 & 3 and 8 & 9 are moved to the outside and empty frames are place in the empty 3 & 7 slots.  Moving the frames up helps with drawing the bees up into the supers by baiting it.  If desired an excluder then can beplaced to separate the harvestable honey supers from the brood box  because the placement of the storage frames has already baited the bees with motivation to move up into that box.  This system works better in an all medium or all deep approach over a mixed super size system.

2. Timely supering is also essential to provide space for emerging bees as they hatch.  One sure way to force a hive to swarm, and an excemption the rule #1 above, is to crowd the bees.  Once there's more bees than the interior space of the hive can accomidate a switch to swarm mode is made.  The first visible sign of this to the beekeeper is often Bearding but by the time the beekeeper notices it, it may already be too late.  Use the 70/30 or 80/20 rule of supering, which is when 70-80 percent of the frames in a super are covered in bees (not drawn comb) super it immediately.  Waiting even a few days, with brood hatch and comb building can mean the hive is suddenly over populated.  If a flow exists, even a minor one, don't hesitate to place more than one super on at a time, particularly if you're using drawn comb.  Bees can fill 2 frames of drawn comb with curing nectar in a week, which means the hive is now short of forage space and must be supered again.  Look at it this way: 3 supers of curing nectar makes 1 super of capped honey.

3. Nutrition: Healthy bees will be more prone to work and enlarge the hive if ample space is provided.  Bees swarm or abscond for several reasons: 1. reporduction of the species, 2. corwded or congested conditions in the parent hive, 3. lack of forage (dearth or Drought) and 4. uninhabitable home (too much disruption, flood, fire, etc).  Healthy bees make more honey, more healthy bees make even more honey.

4. Pollen collection: MOst people don't consider pollen traps to be a part of swarm management but consider: When the ammount of pollen being brought into the hive by foragers is reduced by trapping, that means that the size or turn over rate of the brood chamber must be reduced. So, trapping pollen slows the brood production down, delaying the crowding/congestion within the hive, but this is only a short term solution as trapping should be limited to 2 week intervals.  That is 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off, repeat.

5. Don't destroy queen cells:  Removing queen cells is the absolute worse form of swarm management I have ever encountered.  More often than not the mere act of removing the cells will render the hive queenless.  Why?  Consider: When the hive switches to swarm move it produces a number of queen cells usually, but not limited to, the lower half of the frame.  Once those cells are capped the old queen, who has begun being denied food and laying space by the attendent bees after the queen cells were established, is already slimming down prior to swarming.  That means that once the queen reaches an adequate weight reduction she can swarm at any time.  That swarm time can vary from the day the other queen cells are capped to a few moments after the 1st virgin queen hatches and begins to pipe inside the hive.  That is a space of about 7-8 days.  If the beekeeper enters the hive and removes those cells it might be after the mother queen has already departed.  Result, a queenless hive.  Best bet, make some nucs via splits using the mother queen, if still there, as one of the nucs.  This gives the beekeeper the resources imitate a natrual swarm, killing the swarm tendency, and provide a queen back if the new queen hatched in the parent hives should fail, or for requeening other hives experiencing queen problems.

6.  CAUTION:  There is mounting evidence that feral or survivor colonies are using a self-imposed brood dearth after the main honey flow as a varroa control.  That is the queen suddenly quits laying post flow and the beekeeper thinks the hive has gone queenless, when in fact, all the bees are doing isdisrupting brood production to put a stop on varroa population.  After a short period of 10days to 2 weeks the brood cycle is resumed.  This is actually a good thing as it not only does a number on the varroa but it helps the hive develop and maintain a larger number of late fall bees that are going to see it through the winter. 

I hope this helps your IPM for swarm control.

Thank you Brian!  Printing and putting in my bee journal.

Tracy