Thank you for letting me come. So reassuring to find others are nervous about
handling.
Cheers
Sandra
Sent from my iPhone
On 7 Apr 2019, at 08:42, Zuzana Meryova <zuzanameryova@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dear all,
thank you so much for coming. It really helped me - my stress level about
opening a hive is minimal now :D - SO THANK YOU TONS!
I also apologise about leaving you and rushing onto my other adventure.
I think someone left a flask with mandala picture behind.
I look forward to other meetings,
Warm wishes,
Zuzana
On Sat, 6 Apr 2019 at 22:15, Gareth John <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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