homeless bees

[Johnny]

There is a commercial beekeeper near me and he moves his bees from a watermelon patch during the day time and he leaves alot of bees in the field.
The next day the homeless bees are all piled up where his bee hives were sitting.  They are all just in a big pile doing nothing.  Is there any way to
save these bees and put them in a beehive with a new bought queen?  Last year I tried putting a hive box  near them and they just covered the outside
of the box and didn't go inside.  I put a couple frames with comb on them and it didn't help.
Any ideas anyone?

[cao]

Since they are all field bees, they had no reason to go inside an empty box.  If I were in your place and had a small nuc, I would put it there.  With the brood, queen, and nurse bees in a nuc, they should go in and give the nuc a good boost.  You could do it with a bought queen also.  The downside to that would be that there are no nurse bees.  Some of the field bees would have to revert back to nurse bees.  Either way I would give it a shot.

[BeeMaster2]

First, welcome to Beemaster.
Here is what I did when I had it move my hives.
I left a Nuc that was a newly caught swarm trap hive.



As you can see, there are way more bees than fit in the hive. By the way the swarm is in the top box, opening towards the camera and there is another trap below it with the entrance on the other side. Both boxes had bees in them.
I placed a box of drawn brood on the bottom to provide space for these field bees to unload their nectar and then moved the frames into the second box and added drawn frames. I also added a box of foundation on top.





Then I started shaking all of the bees off of the top box then off of the bottom lid, then the bottom frames and finally the bees on the bottom box.
Hope this helps.
Jim

[sc-bee]

A split (couple frames of brood and extra comb) with a caged bought queen would be a good option if you wanted more colonies IMHO

[beepro]

If there are more field bees then I would put a small nuc with drawn comb inside the box on the field.
Put a frame of open larvae/eggs if you want them to make a new queen otherwise put in a mated queen will do.  To be
sustainable put in one frame of cap broods and start feeding them.    Sugar syrup will lure them in next to the bee box.  Worth a try!
'

[BeeMaster2]

I stopped by this evening to see how the stranded bees were doing.
By the way the 8 frame box was a hive that I left at the first site after I moved them trailer of bees.
As you can see they have pretty much moved into the 2 hives.
I also had to leave another hive behind this evening. This is the fourth time I have had to move this trailer of bees.



Jim