Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => HONEYBEE REMOVAL => Topic started by: FloridaGardener on June 07, 2020, 10:33:24 am
-
I bid low on this, it was close to home and looked easy. Went smoothly...
I patched those neat little discs sequentially into frames with rubber bands and toothpicks...Perfect order, perfectly straight little nest.
But I was short on one important element in the new hive setup -
A queen excluder under the hive body.
:embarassed:
THAT is not going to happen again.
Was chatting with another beek, same thing happened when he hived a caught swarm. Misery loves company, as the saying goes, so I thought I should post it here. *sigh*
-
Good job.
Since you have brood, there is a good chance they will not leave.
Swarms that are put in a box need the queen excluder to keep them in for a couple of days.
Jim Altmiller
-
Aww, Jim, that was the surprise. Gone. They did leave. From now on I'm using the excluder, even if they have brood!
:oops:
The brood was trimmed off the roof, and hived in my apiary in about 90 minutes. It's wasn't chilled, it was 75-80 degrees out.
-
Sorry, Jim, but a cutout will leave brood often. It happens too often to be comfortable with leaving her loose.
-
I do not know if it is the right thing to do or not, but I learned from Schawee and JP to leave the queen in the clip inside the new cutout for a time of settling in before releasing her. This has worked well for me. I have not used the excluder for this purpose,,,,, (yet).
-
I also learned the hard way this week after doing a cut out for a friend of a large colony in the side of his house. I did not restrict the queen and after two days they left and went to the top of a tree where they stayed for three more days before finally leaving. They completely ignored three swarm traps I had set up near the bay yard. Lesson learned. this is the first colony I have had to do this to me after many cut outs. From now on I will restrict the queen.