The Accidental Smallholder Forum

Livestock => Bees & Beekeeping => Topic started by: Laurieston on July 09, 2012, 09:41:55 pm

Title: Transferring brood from one hive to another - a question
Post by: Laurieston on July 09, 2012, 09:41:55 pm

Have recently acquired a second hive (I hadn't realised how much I would come to love my bees!!!), and they are pretty weak.  My existing hive, even with my novice treatment are doing well, with all but one frame in the brood box filling nicely with brood.  My idea was to transfer a brood frame or two into the weak hive to bolster them.

My question is how to do it.  At least how to do it without accidently transferring my existing my Queen with the frame - leaving one hive with no Queen and one with 2.

My options (as I see them):

• Can I transfer the whole frame without any bees on, or would that risk cooling the eggs/lavae too much?
• Or do I transfer the frame with bees and hope there is no Queen in the crowd?  (but would the bees then fight with the bees from the receiving hive?)
• or something else I haven't yet thought of....

Thanks for any thoughts, experiences or suggestions.

Laurieston.

Title: Re: Transferring brood from one hive to another - a question
Post by: Moleskins on July 09, 2012, 10:27:10 pm

Hi, take a frame with sealed brood on it, shake all the bees off and put that into the weaker hive. The young bees will soon emerge and add to the numbers in your weak hive. You can then do another frame in about a week or so's time if all is well. This way it won't strip your good hive too much.
Obviously replace the frame you take out, and make sure they have sufficient food in the weak hive, if not give them some syrup.