Amazing, well done and good luck going forward.
________________________________
From: oxnatbees-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <oxnatbees-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf
of Mags <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2019 8:33:12 PM
To: oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [oxnatbees] Moving bees less than 3 miles story
Hello everyone,
I just wanted to share what we have been doing with our new arrival.
My husband got some bees from a neighbour for his Warre hive, these bees were
about half a mile away from us.
The lady was getting rid off a her whole hive as she needed the equipment back
as spare for her other 3 hives.
We had to decide on whether moving them first to a new location more than 3
miles away for a few weeks or moving them straight to us but using a few tricks
to force them reorientate and not fly back to their original hive spot.
We decided to move them straight to our garden as we felt it would also be
quite disruptive for them to move place twice, plus the risk of something going
wrong whilst driving them 30 min away.
The move on the first night went relatively smoothly, we went at around 7:30 pm
to have the last bees come in and ceiled the entrance with foam and duck tape,
we strapped the hive with 2 ratchet straps, cling filmed the hive around. That
was rather good as the boxes started to separate slightly as we pushed the hive
into the car and thanks to the cling film the bees stayed safe in the hive. We
were only driving for 5 min so we weren’t too worried about the ventilation.
We then brought the hive to it’s new place and removed the cling film.
I had prepared a bee tea syrup with fresh flower and herbs from the garden as
they were going to stay locked in.
We added the feed from a top feeder and kept the hive entrance ceiled for 2
days, as it was quite hot I added a big umbrella to keep the hive in the shade.
After 48hrs around 6pm we tied loads of twigs and branches in front of the
entrance and removed the ceil.
The results were that only 20 bees went back to the original hive spot. So a
very good success! They then stayed here happy foraging for 4-5 days and today
we transferred them into the Warre hive.
The transfer went as follow:
We used the recommendation from Gareth took the brood box and removed the queen
excluder added the transfer board to fit the warre hive on top. Smoked them
from underneath and drummed them for 10min. 10 min of non stop drumming is a
lot longer than I thought!
After a while I looked through the observation window and saw a cluster of bees
in the top box so we added it to the floor of the warre. There were still
plenty of bees left on the frame of the combs with brood, we were not too sure
whether the queen was transferred but then we saw some bees entering the Warre
so we took this as a signal that the queen must be in. We then added another
box on top of the warre where the cluster was and brushed off all the bees from
the frames of the brood box and did the same with the frames
Of the super. Between start to end including tidying up all the equipment
moving all the frames away and taking the old hive away, it took us 3 hrs
between the 2 of us!
All the rest of the bees went then inside the hive on their own after we fully
assembled the warre. We extracted their honey to feed it back to them. And they
are currently all clustered inside the top box, so fingers cross they will
build some new combs very soon.
The harsh part was to let the brood die and seeing new bees being born but
unable to fly to go to the hive, the combs and brood all looked really healthy.
I thought it was very interesting that actually we can move a hive less than 3
miles.
I will keep you posted in the next few days, I think it’s good start and really
praying that the Queen is really in there.
Magalie
