NOW WHAT

[BEEn Stung]

I read, in this forum, about puting a hive in a tree to atract a swarm. I did. I have bees in the box today. I don't know if they are from one of my hives but expect so as they are close.
I don't know if they have one of my new queens or an old queen.
I don't want another hive.
How can I best utilise these bees?
If I set them on top of one of my hives will they stay there?
Should I kill their queen or put an excluder between?
What ifI happen to put them back on the hive they came from?
They have old junkey frames. Should I put them on good frames?
Do I just put paper between, if I wish to combine them, and let the queens settle who will reign supreme?
If I try to combine them will they accept their new location of go 50 ft back to the tree?
Life would be so much simplier if I had not put that hive in the tree!!!!!



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Erwin

[Michael Bush]

It would be simpler but you'd have less bees.

Are the queens in your hives marked?

If so I'd look for the queen and if she's marked, I'd kill her and combine with one of your hives with newspaper.

If the queens in your hives are not marked, then you don't know her age or if she's a young queen from an afterswarm or from a survivor feral hive.

You can just do a combine with newspaper and the bees will choose the queen. They usually choose the youngest one anyway.

If you think this was a recent swarm from one of your hives, I'd wait a week or two for them to settle down and them combine just so they don't try to swarm again.

[BEEn Stung]

Thanks for the reply MB.
My new queens are not marked and the old ones had been marked but there was only a speck of white remaining this spring. Probably all gone now.
I think I will take the "wait a week" rout for now. I suspect they may have been from one of my hives. It had rained for 13 consecutive days and 20 degrees below normal so yesterday when we had a nice day they aparently decided to go for it.
There are other bees 1/2 mile from me so they could be from there. He has many more hives then I do. http://www.beesource.com/ubb/confused.gif as usual

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Erwin

[Michael Bush]

I wish I had too many bees. http://www.beesource.com/ubb/smile.gif

[Scot Mc Pherson]

I am curious, but why are you using swarm traps if you don't want the swarms?

Alternatively, you can always just use swarms to helpout one or more colonies, but again why are you bothering?

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Scot Mc Pherson
Foundationless Small Cell Top Bar Hives
BeeWiki: http://linuxfromscratch.org/~scot/beewiki/

[Curry]

I put two boxes up in different trees and checked on them last week. I was two for two with swarms in them. One was easy to get down, but the other (single deep) was half full of honey already, and was too high to risk carrying down the ladder. So, I put a strap around the hive and tied a rope to it and put the rope around a branch above the hive, and lowered it down to the ground. I was nervous that they would come crashing down, but it worked. I replaced both swarm boxes 'cause I'm wanting more free bees. I just had old comb in the other swarm boxes... but this time I put some lemongrass oil on the front of the deeps.