Adding frame of brood to weak colony

[katmike]

Yesterday I added a frame of capped brood to a weak colony. My concern now is that the night time temps are forecast down to mid 40s and there are probably not enough bees to cover the new frame I added.

Mistake?

[Michael Bush]

Time will tell. A good way to boost a weak colony is emerging brood. It requires less heat and will boost the population sooner and require less resources.

[BigDaddyDS]

I'm experiencing the same sort of weather you are right now. This is what I did:

About a week ago, I transferred a weak nuc that just won't seem to take off from their 10 frame, back into a 5 frame nuc box. Basically dwindling away, I added a frame of capped brood... WITH adhering bees, making sure I didn't take the queen. Afterwards, I placed this nuc about 30 feet away from the hive that I took the frame of brood from. (The reasoning here is that the nurse bees would stay with the frame and brood, while the foragers would drift back to the parent hive.)

The results appear to be that the queen is responding well to the smaller hive space and is beginning to lay well. The additional bees are able to keep the eggs/larva warm. And no fighting/robbing was seen to occur.

The key (for me) was to keep the adhering nurse bees on the brood frame, rather than brushing them off.

DS

[BjornBee]

A half killed frame of brood due to night temps is never good. And it takes alot of energy for a weak colony to deal with dead cells.

One of the ways to boost a weak hive is simply swap locations between a weak colony and a strong one. This is done mid-day, and the forage bees from the strong hive will now be coming back to the weak hive. They will overwhelm the weak hives guards and will be given a pass anyways since they are overloaded with nectar and pollen.

This allows more bees to be in the hive that same night, allowing more brood and expansion. It can be used with the addition of a brood frame also. But this gives the hive enough bees to ensure no lost chilled brood.

I find the strong hive normally recovers within a weak or two (bees become forage at about day 21 out of the cell, but this can be adjusted up to about day 10 when needed.), and the impact and change to the weak hive is much faster than adding a frame now, one later, and watching the weak hive take much longer to get it together.