Bee Transfer Continues

The transfer of feral bees from the tree to the modern Langstroth hive continues. Here is the plan for moving honey bees from a hollow tree to a modern bee hive: As bees leave the tree, they are unable to return to their nest, but they find an acceptable nest inches away in a modern bee hive holding a queen-right bee colony. When the transition started, the feral bees left their nest in the hollow catalpa tree as usual to forage. When the foragers returned, they found their entrance hole blocked by the one-way screen funnel. Desperate to get back to their nest, the foragers probed the area around the entrance hole until they found an alternative entrance around some broken tree bark. As long as bees can return to their feral nest in the hollow tree, the transfer is ineffective. Once I blocked the bees’ new entrance around the broken bark with window screen, duct tape, and roofing shingles, the transfer to the new hive progressed effectively. Beekeepers should return to the transfer site daily to observe the condition of the screen funnel and the bees’ activity. At night, skunks or raccoons may damage the funnel. During daylight hours, the beekeeper should see bees exiting the tree through the funnel. Darkening the funnel with duct tape encourages the bees to walk to the end of the funnel. A lack of bees may mean that the funnel is blocked with dead bees.

Every feral transfer attempt progresses differently, and at times corrective action is required to complete the bee transfer. After a week in place, I checked the Langstroth hive and found a large population of bees, plenty of capped brood, but no eggs or open brood. It appears that the bees killed the marked queen. This required me to bring in another colony of bees in a Langstroth hive body and combine the hives using a newspaper separator. After another week it appears the bees accepted this second queen.

--Richard

From Bird House to Bee Hive

Honey bees expand their territory and numbers of colonies by dividing the hive and swarming. This colony-wide method of reproduction typically occurs in the spring, but some swarming is done in the summer and fall. When the swarming bees leave their old hive, they take their old queen along with them. They leave behind a new queen or capped queen cell, which is ready to emerge as a queen. The swarm flies around then stops for a while, searching for a cavity to use as a permanent nest. The cavity is often an object that was not intended for housing honey bees. In the photo you may see honey bees that occupied a large, decorative bird house in a suburban garden. After the bees filled the cavity with comb and honey, the weight caused the bird house to fall to the ground. At the request of the homeowner, I removed the bird house and the bees.

I carried the bird house to a distant bee yard where I take swarms with their unknown genetics. I placed the bird house on a screened hive bottom and enclosed it in two medium-depth hive bodies. Above the bird house, I placed another hive body filled with drawn comb. In the center of this upper box, I placed a frame of open brood, borrowed from another colony. Nurse bees were attracted to the pheromones of the open brood, and they moved up immediately. Over time, more and more bees moved up into the frames of comb. It is a natural tendency for honey bees to move their brood nest upward. Once the queen moved into the upper box, I was able to hold her there by placing a queen excluder under this box. After a brood cycle of 21 days, all of the honey bee eggs laid in the bird house had emerged as adults. I was then able to remove the bird house and the empty lower hive body boxes. This transition from a bird house to a modern Langstroth bee hive was successful. It is now a productive hive. Much of the enjoyment of beekeeping comes from the challenges of continually solving situations such as this colony transfer.
--Richard