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Moving bees from one hive to another...?

4412 Views 5 Replies 5 Participants Last post by  SamG347, 
S
Got a question for you guys. I have two combo hives. I want to move all the bees in each into two new langs. I'm thinking of just taking 2-3 of the brood combs and then everything else will be new lang frames with foundation. The hives are currently queenless or in the process of having a virgin queen come back from a mating flight..unless she is back havent checked in a few days. My question is how do I get the majority of the bees into the new hives? I will post some pics below of the hives themselves...any suggestions would be appreciated...I was thinking of maybe putting a deep super on the front....moving 2-3 of the brood combs up....and a new queen in a cage...with a queen excluder below the super to make sure she can't move from the super if freed. And then maybe the bees will move up into the super with the new queen.

But I dont know :s

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f94/SamG347/PA%20Bees/FallBirdsandBees006.jpg

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f94/SamG347/PA Bees/FallBirdsandBees007.jpg

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f94/SamG347/PA Bees/SummerpicsAUGUST001.jpg
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F
If those are standard frame top bars why don't you just move them all into a new deep box? Then, over a period of time replace them with new frames/foundation, one frame at a time. No sense wasting all that brood comb. The bees will not leave brood on their own. After moving the frames dump all the bees into the new box and do a normal queen introduction.
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David LaFerney
If you put the new hives in the same locations with the entrances pointed the same way they will mostly end up in the new hives. They might be a little confused for a few days.
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J
If you have a virgin queen in a hive you should not be moving or changing anything as she may get disorientated coming back from a mating flight.
I would wait to see that she is laying before making changes.
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sqkcrk
Combo hives? What is a combo hive? I haven't heard that term before. The frames look like standard Langstroth size. Are they?

After you have the frames of brood in the boxes that you want them in, dump the bees that weren't on the combs into the new box. If they won't dump, slam the box that they are in, not too hard, down onto a cover and dump those into the new box.

Or am I missing something in your question? Misunderstanding what you are asking?
Whats wrong w/ where they are?

Also, I wouldn't do this w/ the virgin queen until she is mated and has layed for a while. Just me.
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S
They are just the top bars of lang frames....the hives are just a pain...can't reverse boxes in the spring....cross combing.....etc. I'm trying to get all my gear headed the lang direction. I do not know even if the hives had a virgin queen hatch and make it that is my prob. The one threw a little swarm..but each hive still has a good number of workers and drones.
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