A friend of mine foolishly moved a two box full colony from his front yard to his backyard after a neighbor complained. He did it it one go and created the expected disaster: all his foragers returned tp the original location the next day. He rang me and I told him how he should have rung me BEFORE he made that foolish move. I told him to put a Nuc box with empty frames out at the original location which he has now done- and the foragers are all going in as expected.
My question is what to do now? he can’t really move that nuc in increments out to the rear as he would have to move along the fence-line with the neighbor- and its over 50 meters.
An experienced beek advised me that I could remove the nuc tonight and merge those foragers with a hive of mine. I do have a very small swarm I caught a few days ago that’s a potential candidate - but I am worried that that was a really small swarm- maybe one frame of bees- and merging an entire load of foragers might overwhelm it? I don’t know how many will end up in the Nuc but it could be a whole Nucs worth as it may be most of the foragers from a strong colony… Also his house is only 2.7km away from mine so I am concerned many of the bees will simply return there tomorrow?
Gosh what a goof-up! In your shoes I’d prob do what that experienced beek advised. If you can get a frame of honey into the nuc and use newspaper to do the merge your strays will be pretty busy & fine until they make it thru to your swarm. You could put branches in front of the entrance to provide yet another orienting process for when they reach the opening after chewing through.
Hi Jack, it’ll take a few days for all the bees that have done orientation flights to all turn up at the old site. I would put a frame with BIAS in the nuc box & wait for a few days. It’ll finish up with quite a sizable colony.
2.7km can be far enough away if the bees don’t have to travel far to gather their nectar. I’m pretty sure that I’ve moved hives that far without bees returning.
Is the neighbor approachable? If so, he might be talked into tolerating the nuc being shifted around the back in stages. A small colony is less likely to have aggressive guard bees than a large colony. I would move it in reverse 1 meter a day. When I say reverse, I mean with the entrance trailing. That way, the bees only have to fly one more meter in the same direction to reach the entrance.
PS Jack, I googled my street map to see how far that house is away. It turned out to be 1.8km away. Quite a few colonies went to that address on various occasions, with little to no bees returning.
thanks Jeff- that was exactly the plan I was coming to. I’m going to go there this afternoon and find a frame of BIAS from the original hive and put it in the nuc. Currently it only has fresh foundation- and one frame of honey. I don’t think the neighbor is approachable as he already complained to council and that’s how this all started… We have plenty of flowering trees all over very close to the hives -so I am guessing 2.7 k will be far enough away. I might see if the nuc can stay where it is for another two days to scoop up as many bees as possible. Looks liek I might get a nice little split out of it- and he requeened that hive earlier this year with a nice golden Italian.
You already have some helpful ideas, but I would try something different. Do a triple layer newspaper merge of the foragers with the moved hive, and put a large shrub, tree branch or something in front of the main hive entrance to force a re-orientation. Hopefully with the delay of a couple of days to get through the newspaper, and the changed entrance view, many of the foragers should get the message that they have moved.
thanks dawn, however we already went with the BIAS stage frame plan. Went there yesterday afternoon. Found many many bees simply gathered all over the outside of the nuc box- with only some inside. Went and inspected the mother hive- it was all good with still quite a few bees. removed the second super which was empty as the bees no longer needed that much space- took a frame of eggs with a small amount of capped brood and went and put it in the Nuc. That immediately started to draw all the bees from the outside in. I just hope enough foragers can revert to being nurses to get some good queen cells built. They now have the one frame of eggs and one of honey so it’s basically a small split. I will go and collect it tomorrow evening.
Turns out there was more to the story: when they moved the hive at night they tripped and the hive fell open- they got covered in crawling bees and many many stings… So many they called an ambulance… seems it was a total disaster.
Hi Jack, that WAS a disaster. Plenty of lessons well learnt.
I have found that foraging bees are able to raise queens. To be sure, it’s best to make sure that the BIAS includes plenty of emerging bees in the mix.
Because the colony is mainly older bees, it would be prudent to add another frame with mainly emerging bees in the near future.
Hi there Jeff,
I was thinking to maybe do a trick where you take a brood frame from a hive and leave it outside the hive for 10 minutes. All the foragers fly off it and return to the hive leaving only nurses. You then shake those nurses in front of a weak hive to give it a big boost of nurses. Apparently it works very well and the nurses never fight and are all accepted. It is used as a swarm prevention method also to weaken out a crowded hive whilst boosting a weak one. I learned about it in this Bruce White video- which is a great video for swarm prevention methods:
bruce won the order of Australia for his services to the beekeeping industry.
In the short term I am confident this little split will be OK- as it had really quite a lot of bees. I imagine today they are busy working on these queen cells and not wasting any time.
Yes absolutely Jack, I watched that video recently. I liked that bit you mentioned. I plan on using it myself when the occasion arises.
I see that bloke with 1200 hives in Canada puts brood frames covered with bees into weaker colonies. He reckons that at that particular time the bees are too interested in other things to be bothered with fighting.
I had a very weak hive coming out of winter this year (barely 2 frames of bees) to which I added 3frames of brood and bees straight in with no fighting at all. However they did have a young queen - don’t know if would make any difference putting them into a queen less hive??
Hi Tim, I don’t know. I think it all depends on what’s happening. While there’s plenty of pollen & nectar available & the bees are building, we should be fine. I’m pretty sure that’s what the bloke meant when he said “the bees had other things on their minds”. They were probably busy building. The bloke with 1200 hives might not have the time to wait to see if there was any fighting.
cheers
Thanks for sharing this video, Jack. Some really great tips in there. I did not know that I could shake the frames in front of the colony and that the queen would rush in to the entrance (the hours I’ve spent looking for Queens! ) Nor did I realise I could introduce nurse bees into a weak colony by shaking them onto the ground in front of the hive. Wow. New skills to implement. Love it.
) Nor did I realise I could introduce nurse bees into a weak colony by shaking them onto the ground in front of the hive. Wow. New skills to implement. Love it.