Transfer from a Dadant hive to a Langstroth

[Dawn_SD]

@Faroe

Where is the original post on how to do this?

You mean how to do the rubber banding? That photo really shows it all. This was the post, though:

Caught a birdhouse swarm, hived it, left it alone, and now the bees are in the wrong place

As you have already worked out, they consider the birdhouse to be their hive/home. They will not leave it willingly. If you put it inside a bigger box, they will just try to fill up the gaps with comb again but they will keep using the birdhouse. You cannot stop them from doing that, they are just being normal bees! I am worried that you will end up with a mess if you do that. I would suggest a cut-out instead. Take the comb from the inner cover and rubber band it into the empty frame…

If I had a nuc on medium Langstroth frames, I would probably just put it into a medium box on the hive. I would then add a deep when the nuc had filled the medium box, and eventually rotate the medium frames out of the hive, if desired.

If we are talking about a medium Dadant, though, the problem is different. I think I would do a cutout for that, although you can put Langstroth boxes on top of Dadants. I am sure some French guys have shown photos of that in the “Coin des Francais” thread. You just need a strip of wood along the edge of the Dadant box, because it is slightly wider than an 8-frame Langstroth.