Thank you Gareth,
I guess it’s better to do on a dry day?
this morning was meant to be ok but unfortunately the weather forecast wasn’t
that accurate and it’s been raining.
Will let you know how it goes
Thanks
Magalie
On 24 Apr 2019, at 22:38, Gareth John (Redacted sender "grjohn" for DMARC)
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Magalie
Is it better to do this morning or late afternoon?
Whenever the bees are active. Not too late in the day.
If the National is fitted with a queen excluder, I’d start with the brood box
to get the queen and nurse bees transferred first. (The queen would not be
able to get through the QX in any event.) Then I’d do the super. I have not
tried moving bees that have been separated from the queen with a QX but my
hunch is that they may be more resistant, so you might have to brush these
bees.
If there is no QX, it is not so critical (and you won’t know which box the
queen is in) so I’d do the two boxes together. The only thing that might
make me separate the two boxes in this case is if the super is solid with
honey. Queens don’t like moving over sealed honey, so in that case I’d do
the brood box first.
Let us know how it goes.
Gareth
On 24 Apr 2019, at 21:16, Mags (Redacted sender "magalie.valadier" for
DMARC) <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thank you Gareth for this, we are getting ready to do this tomorrow and I
just have a couple of questions.
Is it better to do this morning or late afternoon?
Currently the national hives has a brood box and a super, do I drum both
boxes on top of each other at the same time or one at time starting maybe
with the brood box to transfer the queen first?
Many thanks
Magalie
On 6 Apr 2019, at 22:15, Gareth John (Redacted sender "grjohn" for DMARC)
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Re Shook Swarm
If anyone is thinking of doing a shook swarm to transfer bees from a
National to a Warré, consider drumming the bees as an alternative. It
works from any shaped box into any shaped box provided a converter board
can be made to accommodate the difference in shape between the two boxes.
Thus, for a National to Warré transfer, the board would be made to fit the
National but with a square hole in the middle which is Warré sized.
Remove the National box from its floor and place on an empty 'stand' such
as a spare box so that the combs are exposed below. Remove the covers on
the National and place the converter board on top of the open hive. Place
the empty Warré box on top of the board and put a top cloth over. The bees
are now in an enclosed space, the top part of which is the empty Warré with
top bars in place.
Smoke the National box from below - this need not be a lot of smoke, just
enough to tell the bees to start moving upwards. Then, with two stout
pieces of wood start drumming two opposite sides of the National. Create a
rhythm that feels slightly vigorous but pleasing. After a while, maybe
about 4 - 5 mins, the bees will have formed into a quasi-swarm and will
flow UPWARDS into the empty Warré box. Keep drumming until about 10 mins
or a bit more have elapsed. By that time most of the bees and the queen
should be clustered, swarm-like,on the top bars in the top box. Check by
peeling back just a corner of the top cloth.
When all, or nearly all of the bees have moved up, the Warré box can be
placed on its proper floor in the position of the old hive. Those bees
that are left in the National box (there will be a few) can be shaken or
bushed on to a board placed in front of the entrance to the Warré and they
will join the rest of the bees.
There is a video of beekeepers doing this with cork hives in Portugal
somewhere on the internet. I have done it with two hives so far this year.
It is a lot less disruptive than shaking/brushing all of the bees from the
old hive and took about 10-12 mins to get the vast majority of the bees
transferred. I then placed a feed on the new hive (since they had been
deprived of their stores as well as brood) and after about 12 hours they
started building new comb and behaved exactly like a swarm.
Zuzana, sorry I missed the meeting. I would have come as you are near but
I am currently in Cape Town.
Gareth
On 6 Apr 2019, at 21:02, Oxnatbees <oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thank you for the pictures folks!
Re: shook swarm:
The one time I did this it was with Warre combs, which were only supported
along their top side (where the bees attached them to the bars). So they
could not be shaken violently. I think my main technique was brushing them
with a feather, nt shaking fragile comb. It worked and was
straightforward. I was doing a shook swarm because the hive had become
infested with varroa and I felt it needed a reset to near-zero mites to
recover. The interesting point there though was: I moved the hive a few
feet from its original location, then placed a new hive at the old
location. 95% of bees that flew up returned to the OLD location and
entered the new hive. Perhaps you could use this behaviour in your
situation, by acclimatising the bees to their new location with the
twigs-in-front-of-entrance trick, then a couple of days later do the shook
swarm into a Warre whose entrance is at the exact location of the original
box.
Don't do the shook swarm on the same day you move the brood box because,
like catching a swarm, the bees will be agitated from the move and likely
to abscond. With a swarm you can hive them the same day in the evening but
I suspect a colony not in swarm mode will be even more upset about being
messed around.
Do the transfer in the evening to limit the bees' options.
Keep asking questions if you're undecided on some aspect. We won't
necessarily know the answer, but different people on this List can give
you ideas and random facts and anecdotes. These all give you background so
when things don't go to plan, you can compensate.
Paul
On Sat, 6 Apr 2019 at 17:45, Mags <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thank you Zuzana for letting us meet your bees! And also thank you for
welcoming my daughter she had a really nice time!
Paul thank you for putting more thought into this.
Do you think you would have a link or some pictures to share and show me
how to do a shook swarm or explain as best as you can. I have heard a
couple of different methods one was shaking the top bar of the previous
hive into the new hive by tapping the top bar with comb and brood but it
was the same size hive so they could insert the comb with broods and bees
before giving it a kick. I guess it will be more difficult for me a the
warre is a lot smaller. Someone else mentioned using a cone and shaking
the bees inside the cone so that once they enter through it they can’t
come back out. There is also the worry of making sure we have the queen
inside....
Separately to this in terms of logistic when would the best doing:
- late afternoon I would go pick up the hive witch is less than a mile
from, we would seal it once the last bee has got inside the and then move
it to our new site which is about 5 min drive
- assuming there is still an hour left before dawn would try to transfer
them immediately or keep them sealed overnight and do it the next day
morning or evening ?
As there is also the worry that they are less than 3 miles from their
original location. So my idea was to once transferred keep them in for
2-3 days with good ventilation and then use twigs and branches in front
of their entrance to make them reorientate? Any thoughts?
Thank you again
Magalie
On 6 Apr 2019, at 16:22, Paul Honigmann (Redacted sender
"paul.honigmann" for DMARC) <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thank you to everyone who came and particularly Zuzana for her
tolerance and hostessing despite a very busy schedule!
If anyone has any good pictures for the blog write-up please share
(especially if you have one of me, I don't have so many of those).
Meanwhile here is one of the group in the bus shed.
Magalie - I have been thinking carefully about your question, how to
transfer bees from a National deep brood box to a Warre. I am saying
this on this public forum so others can add their insights. [Magalie is
being given a deep brood box from a National, full of bees, but has a
Warre hive. I advised against a grow-down, i.e. trying to get the bees
to gradually expand / migrate from the National box to the Warre via an
adapter, because I've tried it and Ann Welch has tried it and it
doesn't work.]
On reflection I think it has to be a "shook swarm" because if you
transfer ANY brood comb, the bees will build their nest in the Warre
around that and you will end up with a horrendous mess, probably
starting with an uninspectable welded-together mass of comb in the
bottom box and the bees building randomly and very slowly above that.
So sacrifice the brood. Shake and brush the bees in to the Warre: it is
probably best to do this about an hour before sunset so they have no
option but to stay there (and block the entrance so they can't get out
that night, but allow some ventilation). Let the brood die from cold
overnight then let the bees salvage stores from the old comb.
This is the best time of year to do a shook swarm, because the colony /
queen is healthy and the brood losses are relatively low. The colony
lifecycle is programmed to build up numbers now so this loss of brod is
a bump in the road, not a car crash. An incidental benefit of a shook
swarm is that it gets rid of 90% of any varroa there may have been,
because they tend to be in the capped brood. The sooner you do it the
more time the colony has to rebuild and and grow strong this year.
Paul
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