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:
and hostessing despite a very busy schedule!
Thank you to everyone who came and particularly Zuzana for her tolerance
(especially if you have one of me, I don't have so many of those).
If anyone has any good pictures for the blog write-up please share
Meanwhile here is one of the group in the bus shed.
transfer bees from a National deep brood box to a Warre. I am saying this
Magalie - I have been thinking carefully about your question, how to
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.]
transfer ANY brood comb, the bees will build their nest in the Warre around
On reflection I think it has to be a "shook swarm" because if you
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.
queen is healthy and the brood losses are relatively low. The colony
This is the best time of year to do a shook swarm, because 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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