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Moved a wild bee colony, how can we tell if it worked?
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Posted by florida_bee Florida (My Page) on Sun, Mar 22, 09 at 11:15
| Yesterday my boyfriend and I moved a wild bee colony out of a culvert pipe and into a bee box. The culvert is on the ranch where we work, and some people wanted to destroy the hive, so we thought we would attempt to move it, even though it is not something we have done before. We met with a beekeeper to get supplies and some instructions on how to move the hive. We cut the combs out and trimmed them to fit into the frames, and moved as many bees as we could into the hive. We left it facing the culvert until dark, when we moved it over a mile away from the original location. After dark last night we could still see a handful of bees in the culvert pipe that we were unable to move yesterday, and did not move into the box on their own. This morning those bees were very active, flying around and in and out of the culvert. There also appears to be a lot of bee activity around the bee box in its new location. While we were moving the bees we did move the queen into the box. How can we tell if the bees are abandoning the box and moving back to the culvert, and is there anything at this point we can do? If the majority of the bees are staying in the bee box, what should we do about the small swarm in the culvert pipe? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, we are complete beginners with this! |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Moved a wild bee colony, how can we tell if it worked?
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| >>how can we tell if it worked?<< Check your comb in about a week to see if you have eggs.
If the culvert is getting more active that means that another queen is there.
Swarms sometimes carry young unmated queens, these queens is what you want
to have, you might have the old queen. Konrad |
RE: Moved a wild bee colony, how can we tell if it worked?
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| If I moved an established hive, I try my best to have the old queen with the move. If you have all but a handful be happy. The ones left behind you can try to capture and take to the hive or write them off. |
RE: Moved a wild bee colony, how can we tell if it worked?
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florida_bee
How did you trim the comb to fit the box. Did you just sit it in the box or remove a few frames. Did you have a hard time finding the queen. I need to do the same thing.
Ronnie |
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