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
<mailto: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
<mailto: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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