Adding bees

[Frankie]

I have a small swarm that we hived about 6 weeks ago- first in a cardboard nuc box, and now in a full sized deep with 10 frames.  They seem to be doing fine.  The swarm originated from inside of a wall on the house next door about 150 feet away.

My neighbor has put up a screen rolled into a tube and has attached it over the hole in his wall in an attempt to rid his wall of the original colony.  Now at night, the foragers cluster next to the screened hole- maybe 300-500 of them- because they can’t get back in.

Can I add these bees to my hive?  If so, what is the best way?  Last night I tried scraping the cluster into the empty nuc box, placing it next to my hive, then opening the hole the next morning. I wound up just taking the lid off the box and the little cloud of bees that resulted slowly diminished, but I couldn’t really tell where they went because there was already a steady stream of traffic going in and out of my hive.  I didn’t see any fighting at the entrance to my hive for what that’s worth.

I am feeding my hive sugar syrup with a plastic zip lock bag on top of the frames, with an empty shallow box above that.  It would be easy to dump them in and cover up, but is that advisable?  I’ll be scraping tonight’s lost orphans into the nuc box again to try again tomorrow…..

[RayMarler]

make up a box with a frame of eggs/open larva, a frame of nectar, and foundation for the rest of frames and place it at the hole in the wall so that the returning bees to the wall as they can't get in will goto the box and raise you a queen  and make you a hive. the tube covering the hole in wall should be a cone, so that the bees cannot enter the small end of cone to get back into wall.

[patook]

What Ray is suggesting is called a trap-out and is a great way to get the bees and honey out of your neighbor's house. Just closing the entrance will result in at best a lot of dead bees and honey in his walls to attract other insects.  At worst, the bees will find another way out, possibly into the house.  It looks like what he did is almost a trap-out.

Look in the "Honeybee removal" forum for some great tutorials on doing a trap-out.