Hello everyone,
I have a quick question about the honey and feeding.
I harvested about 10l of honey from the brood box and combs we removed, I fed
the bees about 3l back so far and I can see through the observation window
today that they have started building new combs and are bringing pollen back in.
What shall I do about the rest of the honey shall I keep feeding it back or
keep it for later if they need it and leave them to it now that they have
started building combs?
I have seen the very useful comments shared about feeding swarms but I guess
this is slightly different as we moved them hive without them being prepared.
Any advice would be great!!
Thanks
Magalie
On 26 Apr 2019, at 11:29, Oxnatbees <oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
OK. I am the same. When I look back at my photo collection for something to
illustrate a point, I can rarely find exactly what I need.
In particular: I recently taught a course in beekeeping; I needed pictures of
comb with bees on it to show the use of tools, etc.
I realised I had almost none. Since my wife stopped handling the bees,
because we found she was very allergic to the stings, there is no one to hold
a camera for me;
and I open hives so rarely now that there just weren't many photos at all. It
was quite a shock to realise that there are several colonies I have NEVER
opened.
When I started keeping bees, I opened the hives every 2 weeks or so... it was
useful actually, because I learned a lot.
I worry that some people who keep bees never open their hives, because if
anything goes wrongt hey won't know what "normal" looks like.
Thanks for checking,
Paul
On Fri, 26 Apr 2019 at 07:36, Mags <magalie.valadier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Paul,
Unfortunately I don’t , I really wanted to but both my husband and I were
wearing gloves, and in a middle of cloud of slightly upset bees we didn’t
have the courage to take them off to take photos from our phone. No one in
the house dared coming close enough.
I only have that picture of twigs and branches on the entrance when we
released the bees, the picture doesn’t show but they were immediately all
flying around reorientating themselves
<image1.jpeg>
On 26 Apr 2019, at 00:18, Oxnatbees <oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Magalie,
we will be publishing an article on the blogsite tomorrow about the
methodologies of transferring bees between hive types, i.e. a summary of
the mailing list discussion around tradeoffs between growdowns, shook
swarms, drumming etc. And of course include your successful experience!
If you have a relevant photo we could use that would be great - don't worry
if not, people don't always have the presence of mind to take a photo in
the midst of it all happening!
Congratulations again,
Paul Honigmann
On Thu, 25 Apr 2019 at 20:35, Mags <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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
