Re bees reviving after cold.... I remember collecting quite a few bees
from outside my hive one year, they appeared dead and had been there
during quite a cold spell for three days at least. I remember walking
down the garden with them in my hand in the dark and jumped out of my
wits when they began to wriggle ! lol. I remember dropping them all,
just a knee jerk reaction. Then I searched the floor with a torch to
find them and brought as many as I could inside and some of them did
revive. I was convinced they were dead and just wanted to look at them
through a microscope ! Wrong ! They were alive ha ha.
Ann
On 25/04/2019 22:56, Paul Honigmann (Redacted sender paul.honigmann for
DMARC) wrote:
This is impressive given that you've only just started keeping bees. Congratulations.
In the morning, check if there are any new bees in the old comb / frames. Although capped brood will be chilled and die, newly hatched bees might be resilient enough to survive a night - certainly full adults would be. Being cold blooded, bees sometimes seem dead but are actually just paralysed by cold, then revive in the sun, or when warmed in a hand (though I don't recommend you do that until you are more experienced). If they seem to be alive try putting them at the entrance of the hive and hopefully once they warm in the sun they will walk in and join their sisters.
Paul
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Thursday, 25 April 2019 21:15, Gareth John <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
All the rest of the bees went then inside the hive on their own after we fully assembled the warre.
Then you have probably got the queen in there. Well done.
The harsh part was to let the brood die and seeing new bees being born but unable to fly to go to the hive
Yes, that is hard to watch.
Gareth
On 25 Apr 2019, at 20:33, Mags (Redacted sender "magalie.valadier" for DMARC) <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto: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
