[jfmcree]

I have an over-populated hive that is likely to swarm in the near future. Bees beard the hive continuously and there is a large cluster of them bigger than a package in the vivaldi box in the top.

I moved a honey box to another hive so they can't fly away with that honey. I'd like to mitigate the loss of bees by moving some to another hive. I am thinking of using a bee vacuum to suck some bees from the front of the hive or the vivaldi box to put into another hive in another apiary that is under-populated. I am thinking the hive may still swarm, but at least the bees I relocate will continue working for me. Thoughts on this idea?

 

[Eikel]

I'd consider it easier to transfer bees by just shaking them off of frames? But I'd also do an artificial swarm rather than mess with all the transferring and still end up with them in the trees.

 

[JWPalmer]

100% agree with Eikel. The artificial swarm technique is your only real hope of preventing a swarm if one is in the making. Vacuuming up a bunch of random bees and moving them just won't work. Find the queen, grab a few frames of capped brood and put them in a nuc with the queen and a frame of stores. Shake in another frame or two of nurse bees from frames of open brood and you are good to go. A week later, cull all but two of the queen cells the bees will make in the original hive to keep them from creating an after swarm.