It was reading the bio-bees site that set me off on this. That site is excellent. It's just gets straight down to it will no bullshit.Norm wrote:For anyone who doesn't want to keep honeybees but would like to help bees in general with a bonus of pollinators in their garden, why not give this little project a go:-
http://www.biobees.com/library/bee_hous ... eHouse.pdf
edit to add corresponding blog entry
http://normsbeesnaturally.blogspot.se/2 ... -bees.html
Who Keeps Bees?
Moderator: Peak Moderation
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Little John
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Little John
Need advice from those of you in the know:
Hello people, my name is Steve cook from York.
As some of you know, yesterday I caught a swarm of honey bees from someone's hedge and put them in a square plastic planter with wooden slats over the top.
I took them back to my garden, and placed a very large plastic planter over the top, propped up slightly on one side to given them an entrance.
I have been feeding them sugar syrup and have put a shallow tray of water out for them. Today, they have been feeding like mad on the sugar syrup, which I am assuming is a good thing? They all seem pretty cotent and are now all tucked up for the night.
Today, I have knocked up a three box warre hive and it was my intention to get them transferred to it before dark, but time beat me. Anyway, the warre hive is now ready and this is where I need advice:
Firstly, given that the bees have been in my temporary, makshift, plant-pot top bar hive for over twenty four hours now, will they have started making comb and will this present me with problems when I try to move them to the warre hive?
Secondly, assuming there are no problem arising from the above, or those problems are solvable, what is the best way to move them from the plant pot to the warre hive? Should I turn the top box of the hive upside down, tip the bees into it and then turn it the right way up and then place on the top of the hive? Or, should I tip them onto a sheet with a couple of wooden batons on it and place a warre hive box on top of the tipped out bees and on the batons in the hope they will crawl up into the box? Then allowing me to pick up the box and put it on the top of the warre hive and then put the roof back on?
Or something else?
Hello people, my name is Steve cook from York.
As some of you know, yesterday I caught a swarm of honey bees from someone's hedge and put them in a square plastic planter with wooden slats over the top.
I took them back to my garden, and placed a very large plastic planter over the top, propped up slightly on one side to given them an entrance.
I have been feeding them sugar syrup and have put a shallow tray of water out for them. Today, they have been feeding like mad on the sugar syrup, which I am assuming is a good thing? They all seem pretty cotent and are now all tucked up for the night.
Today, I have knocked up a three box warre hive and it was my intention to get them transferred to it before dark, but time beat me. Anyway, the warre hive is now ready and this is where I need advice:
Firstly, given that the bees have been in my temporary, makshift, plant-pot top bar hive for over twenty four hours now, will they have started making comb and will this present me with problems when I try to move them to the warre hive?
Secondly, assuming there are no problem arising from the above, or those problems are solvable, what is the best way to move them from the plant pot to the warre hive? Should I turn the top box of the hive upside down, tip the bees into it and then turn it the right way up and then place on the top of the hive? Or, should I tip them onto a sheet with a couple of wooden batons on it and place a warre hive box on top of the tipped out bees and on the batons in the hope they will crawl up into the box? Then allowing me to pick up the box and put it on the top of the warre hive and then put the roof back on?
Or something else?
Yes they will have started building comb. I thought you had used top bars to transfer bars and bees to a hive, never mind. Doubtful if queen has come into lay again so soon after conditioning herself for swarming (that's assuming its a prime swarm with old queen). If its a secondary swarm (smaller) with a virgin queen she will be going on a mating flight soon. It is vital not to move the exact position the bees are in now, but get them into the warre asap then do not disturb for at least 3 weeks. I would provide an external syrup feeder for them whilst they are in comb building mania.
The combs that have been started are probably not worth bothering about and may be more trouble than they are worth to transfer them. Good luck.
The combs that have been started are probably not worth bothering about and may be more trouble than they are worth to transfer them. Good luck.
It's all downhill from here!
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Little John
Thanks for that NormNorm wrote:Yes they will have started building comb. I thought you had used top bars to transfer bars and bees to a hive, never mind. Doubtful if queen has come into lay again so soon after conditioning herself for swarming (that's assuming its a prime swarm with old queen). If its a secondary swarm (smaller) with a virgin queen she will be going on a mating flight soon. It is vital not to move the exact position the bees are in now, but get them into the warre asap then do not disturb for at least 3 weeks. I would provide an external syrup feeder for them whilst they are in comb building mania.
The combs that have been started are probably not worth bothering about and may be more trouble than they are worth to transfer them. Good luck.
Should I shake out at the bottom of a ramp to the entrance or should I shake into the top of the warre into an inverted warre box and then turn the box the right way up and then put the quilt box and roof back on?
Or, should I shake onto a white sheet with two wooden batons and then put a warre box with a cover on top of it on the two batons on the basis that the bees will crawl into it and, when they have done so, replace the box on the top of the warre hive and put the roof etc back on?
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Little John
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Little John
One other question for anyone who might know;
Will it be okay to just have the syrup feeder outside the hive? I was intending to use an old plastic 5 litre emulsion paint pot with a snap on water tight lid. I was going to sit this upside down with some very small holes pierced in the lid such that it only let out the occasional drip (due to vacuum and surface tension of the syrup. If the bees went to one of the holes and lapped at it, it would release another drop or so. They would be able to get at the holes because I was going to sit the upside down tub on two wooden batons and have the batons sat on a square base panel of wood. This way, any drops that fell fro the lid would gather as a small shallow puddle on the wooden square base and on the batons.
Also, if I use the sugar syrup, presumably this will mean any of the honey produced in the combs will be contaminated with the sugar syrup. I am presuming this will mean the honey will not taste very good to humans (not that I expect to be able to harvest this year as the bees will need all of it to get though their first winter). In which case, how long before this contaminated honey works its way out of the hive system and the honey becomes pure and proper honey, as it were?
Will it be okay to just have the syrup feeder outside the hive? I was intending to use an old plastic 5 litre emulsion paint pot with a snap on water tight lid. I was going to sit this upside down with some very small holes pierced in the lid such that it only let out the occasional drip (due to vacuum and surface tension of the syrup. If the bees went to one of the holes and lapped at it, it would release another drop or so. They would be able to get at the holes because I was going to sit the upside down tub on two wooden batons and have the batons sat on a square base panel of wood. This way, any drops that fell fro the lid would gather as a small shallow puddle on the wooden square base and on the batons.
Also, if I use the sugar syrup, presumably this will mean any of the honey produced in the combs will be contaminated with the sugar syrup. I am presuming this will mean the honey will not taste very good to humans (not that I expect to be able to harvest this year as the bees will need all of it to get though their first winter). In which case, how long before this contaminated honey works its way out of the hive system and the honey becomes pure and proper honey, as it were?
The reason I mentioned an external feeder was because you do not have other nearby hives which may induce 'robbing' and you wont have to disturb the hive to feed them. Also use an entrance reducer especially if you see wasps taking an interest! This becomes more of a threat the later the season progresses. Don't worry about sugar in honey for now. This feeding is to help them with wax secretion for all the comb building they will be doing. They have to get 'established' within the next month, build comb, store food nectar and pollen and initiate brood to replace these bees that will all soon be dead.
Disregard the old saying about a swarm in July! It harks back to when bees were kept in skeps and killed each year for their harvest. It doesn't apply these days.
Disregard the old saying about a swarm in July! It harks back to when bees were kept in skeps and killed each year for their harvest. It doesn't apply these days.
It's all downhill from here!
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Little John
Thanks again Norm.
Got em all in.
Started about 8am this morning, so took about 4 hours in total. I set the ramp up with a sheet on top and dumped them all out at the bottom of the ramp. At which point they started marching up the ramp more or less straight away. Unfortunately, only about 10% of the little sods went into the opening. The rest crawled down the side of the ramp, onto the hive body and kept on marching on to the top of the bloody roof of the hive and formed a swarm up there. After about 1/2 an hour of this, they were absolutely everywhere but inside the hive. It was at this point that I decided the ramp was doing more harm than good because a lot of the bees had taken residence underneath it. So, I carefully lifted the sheet, shook all the bees off into the air and then did the same with the ramp itself. At this point there were about 10% of the bees in the hive, about 40% flying all over the place and about another 50% crawling on the ground and all over the outside of the hive body. It was not looking good. In fact it was looking like a complete disaster and so I went in side and made cup of coffee in disgust.
Went back out there half and hour ago and there were about 50 bees on the landing platform waving their arses in the air furiously and all of the other bees were now clambering over each other to get to them and then past them in through the opening. Just left now and they are nearly all in. All in all, an orderly march over the course of an hour or so up the ramp and into the hive entrance like I saw on the You-tube videos last this was not!
All of which goes to demonstrate that I should have just left the buggers alone to work it out for themselves at 8am and not tried to interfere. Either that or I have been far luckier than I have a right to be....
Got em all in.
Started about 8am this morning, so took about 4 hours in total. I set the ramp up with a sheet on top and dumped them all out at the bottom of the ramp. At which point they started marching up the ramp more or less straight away. Unfortunately, only about 10% of the little sods went into the opening. The rest crawled down the side of the ramp, onto the hive body and kept on marching on to the top of the bloody roof of the hive and formed a swarm up there. After about 1/2 an hour of this, they were absolutely everywhere but inside the hive. It was at this point that I decided the ramp was doing more harm than good because a lot of the bees had taken residence underneath it. So, I carefully lifted the sheet, shook all the bees off into the air and then did the same with the ramp itself. At this point there were about 10% of the bees in the hive, about 40% flying all over the place and about another 50% crawling on the ground and all over the outside of the hive body. It was not looking good. In fact it was looking like a complete disaster and so I went in side and made cup of coffee in disgust.
Went back out there half and hour ago and there were about 50 bees on the landing platform waving their arses in the air furiously and all of the other bees were now clambering over each other to get to them and then past them in through the opening. Just left now and they are nearly all in. All in all, an orderly march over the course of an hour or so up the ramp and into the hive entrance like I saw on the You-tube videos last this was not!
All of which goes to demonstrate that I should have just left the buggers alone to work it out for themselves at 8am and not tried to interfere. Either that or I have been far luckier than I have a right to be....
Last edited by Little John on 20 Jul 2013, 14:24, edited 1 time in total.
Wow! What a lot of fuss, when we could soon have robotic bees to replace these pesky natural ones 
http://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/201 ... nto-crops/
http://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/201 ... nto-crops/
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Little John
WTF!JohnB wrote:Wow! What a lot of fuss, when we could soon have robotic bees to replace these pesky natural ones
http://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/201 ... nto-crops/
And of course, such devices would never be used to spy on people would they? But, then, even if they do, we will get the usual crowd of useful idiots and shills coming out and saying we should have nothing to worry about if we have done nothing wrong.
They could be multifunctional, and therefore very efficient, and spy on us while pollinating plants!stevecook172001 wrote:WTF!
And of course, such devices would never be used to spy on people would they? But, then, even if they do, we will get the usual crowd of useful idiots and shills coming out and saying we should have nothing to worry about if we have done nothing wrong.
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Little John
Actually, I've got a question CLV.clv101 wrote:I've been away a few days, glad this has worked out okay, good job Steve and welcome to the world of beekeeping!
In my Warre hive I have three boxes stacked on top of each other. As I have come to understand it a natural bee hive in, say, a hollow tree trunk would start building vertical comb in 25mm (or thereabouts) wide comp strips separated by gaps of about 10mm (or thereabouts) at the highest point and then continue building this comb downward till they ran out of space to build. The first comb at the top would be for brood. As the brood hatched and left the comb cells empty, the bees would back-fill these cells with honey as a food store. They would then keep building new cells at the bottom of the comb and fill with new brood. Thus, a brood nest will progressively migrate down a hive's combs.
all of the above being the case, I am led to understand that the bees will begin by building comb from the top box in a Warre hive. In my case, the third box up. However, this morning, I lifted the roof off to place a self feeder in the quilt section which lies just above the top box (this is done by putting a small hole in the covering of the top box and placing the self feeder directly over this hole so the bees can access it ). In doing so, the top bars of the top box were momentarily exposed. I could clearly see that the bees were no where to be seen in this top box. However, the bees are clearly up to something since they are feeding voraciously on the external feeder I have placed outside. The only explanation I can come up with is that they are indeed producing brood comb somewhere in the hive. However, it must be in either the bottom box or the second box though. This does not tally with anything I have read about these hives anywhere on the web though.
Consequently, I am unsure what to do, if anything.
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Little John
After consulting another bee forum, I have been told that whilst this is uncommon it is not unknown and may be due to the swarm coming from a conventional hive and being used to living near the opening. That being the case, I have been told to do what I suspected would be the case and to simply move the position of the bottom box up the stack. But, not for a few week to give the bes time to settle. Or, even, not until it is actually physically necessary due to the bees having run out of comb building space in the bottom box. That being the case, though, how can I tell if the bottom box has been filled up with comb without lifting it up to see and, in doing so, cause a major disruption to the bees? Can I for example, infer that the bottom box has been filled up if I observe bearding at the entrance?