When adding a frame of brood

**bensmith0149** · 01-27-2019, 01:04 PM

When I add a frame of brood to a hive do I need to shake the bees off first?

**Eikel** · 01-27-2019, 01:38 PM

Nope, nurse bees are lovers. CC Miller advised not to add too many frames from one hive or it could cause problems but I've never had a problem adding a couple framess

**Vance G** · 01-27-2019, 10:51 PM

Just make sure you are not moving queens! The best frames to add weak colonies are frames you jiggleshake the bees off and put the frame/s in a box above a queen excluder and let nurse bees come up to cover the brood. That way its only nurses making the move. Being old and feeble in the queen finding eye and lacking patience, this is now my default.

**little_john** · 01-28-2019, 04:55 AM

Originally Posted by bensmith0149

When I add a frame of brood to a hive do I need to shake the bees off first?

Depends on why you're doing it. If the recipient colony is ok for bees, then shake 'em off to save depleting the donor colony. If they're not, then donate the rider bees as well. Vance's method involves more work, but comes with a Queenless guarantee.
LJ

**Alram** · 06-16-2019, 01:19 AM

How long do you have to leave the frame over the queen excluder? 1 hour, a few hours, or overnight?

**Grins** · 06-16-2019, 08:03 AM

Originally Posted by Alram

How long do you have to leave the frame over the queen excluder? 1 hour, a few hours, or overnight?

I have adopted Vance's method as well, it takes one to two hours depending on temps and population in the hive,

**Alram** · 06-19-2019, 08:27 PM

Originally Posted by Grins

I have adopted Vance's method as well, it takes one to two hours depending on temps and population in the hive,

I tried this technique today. I wanted to move 2 frames of eggs to a queen less colony. So I shook the bees off the 2 frames and placed them back on the original hive over a queen excluder. I came back 4 hours later and transferred them to the queen less colony. I was surprised that there were not more bees on the frames. There were way less bees then when I shook them off. One frame was just honey and eggs and had very few bees. The other frame had eggs, larvae, and capped worker brood and had more bees but still very light on bees. Did I do something wrong?

**justbee01** · 06-26-2019, 05:12 PM

I don't think you did anything wrong based on your description. It's been hit or miss for me following this method. I've been more successful waiting a longer period of time (few days).

This year I did things a little different. I shook off all bees and moved the frames of eggs and young larva into the top box above a queen excluder. A week later I returned. The top box was very populated (as expected with this length of time) and much of the brood was open larva so I felt there were an abundance of nurse bees within the top box still.

For my splits I took eggs from the bottom box (shaking all bees off or finding the queen). Then I populated my split using bees shook in from the top box. I was pretty comfortable with this method as there were a lot of bees available for the splits.