Swarm moved into honey supers. Suggestions needed.

First is to let them stay in the super and then move them to the right location on top of
a full hive box. If they stay then you will have a new hive, if not then you can reclaim your
supers again. Shaking bees off the super is not that hard to do. Chances are they will stay so....

or you can put a cover and bottom board on it and walk away, medium or deep only the beekeeper cares!

This is what I would do but this isn't my suggestion :
Put them in a proper hive ASAP so the queen doesn't lay your supers full. Put some or all drawn comb in the new hive. If you need comb drawn the swarm is the best way to get it. If not give them a place to put their cargo and give the queen room to lay regardless. If you can afford it put in some open brood and lastly something I am doing from now on with swarms, put a queen excluder in front of any entrances large enough for the queen to pass through. I lost two this year after giving them a new home. If it is a primary swarm the queen will likely be replaced within two months so look for that and don't let them go hopelessly queenless. There was an article last year in one of the two bee mags about this happening in swarms where the queen was from last year so it isn't one of these things I just heard and like to repeat to make it seem like I know a dman thing.
Good luck.

challenger said:

Put them in a proper hive ASAP so the queen doesn't lay your supers full. Put some or all drawn comb in the new hive.

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Put a bottom board & top covers on as ABK suggested. They already selected a "proper hive." (Unless you believe medium boxes aren't "proper.") They already have all drawn comb and are off to a good start. I have kept lots of colonies in all medium boxes. They're only "supers" if you aren't using them as brood boxes.

Wayne

I would leave em. Perhaps reduce size to 2-3 boxes. You can just shake the bees out of the 4th box. If your're still on a flow the new swarm will pack away quite a bit of honey.

If you must pull them off the comb, try to find the queen and cage her. Put her in the new box and shake the bees in.

CORNISH MAN- The bees, it seems, are already in hive. Put a bottom board and a lid on it and call it good.
BEES WILL BE BEES!!!!!!!!

These are not mediums they are honey supers that the bees have moved into and they already have a bottom and top on them but letting them keep these is not an option I need these supers. Im gonna have to move them into two deeps and am looking for the easiest way to move them into the deeps. Also these honey supers were full so the queen wouldnt have a place to lay anyways.

The queen won't have had much of a chance to lay very many frames, so find the frames that have been laid in, put them in one box, take away everything else and set a deep on top of the honey super w/ the eggs in it. The queen will move up into the deep after a while and you can then remove the honey super from underneath.

When you say that these are not mediums but honey supers, does that mean that they are shallow supers?

You could take everything off of the bottom board, place a deep there, shake each frame of bees out of the honey supers, find the frames that the queen has laid in, place an excluder on the deep and set the honey super w/ the frames w/ eggs on top of the excluder. After some time the eggs will mature and emerge and you will have a honey super again.

Yes, put them inside 2 deep is better for the long run.
Let them settle down first. Then before the sunset move them
on top of a permanent location on the 2 deep. Depending on the hive population, give them a
frame of deep open broods if you have them to encourage them to stay in the hives.
Move the shallow frames with the most bees along with the queen into the deep right in the middle of the top hive. By moving the few frames it will give them lesser disturbance when possible. Then go in to brush off the excess bees off the shallow honey frames into the deep hive. After a day or 2 you can take out the honey frames too out of the top deep. Put in more deep frames for them to draw some comb on. This will work with minimal disturbance to the new hive.

Never occurred to me that you were talking about shallow supers. Also never occurred to me that you were putting out supers full of honey for the bees to clean out. I thought you had extracted and were letting the bees clean up the wet supers as is often done.

Wayne

I'm having the same problem... :scratch: So these were supers, FULL, not extracted? (My apology...I took it as "four full supers to clean out" as 4 supers, full of 40 wet frames). You positive it wasn't just a significant robbing event? :scratch: Swarms will typically choose someplace to move into that gives them the feel of room to grow...not something that's already packed full. You could always put whatever you DO want the bees to move into underneath the boxes they are occupying, and drive them down with a fume board, or smoke...

When the swarm is desperate for a place to live out of the elements, they will swarm into anything that
they feel is safe. Besides, these supers they already recognized and with honey frames too.
They are very smart bees. If you move them gently you don't have to smoke them down. I usually brush
them off gently on top of the frames so they can crawl in.

CORNISH_MAN said:

Also these honey supers were full so the queen wouldnt have a place to lay anyways.

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You have a stack of full supers of honey sitting outside on a bottom board w/ a cover on top? Why?

sqkcrk said:

The queen won't have had much of a chance to lay very many frames, so find the frames that have been laid in, put them in one box, take away everything else and set a deep on top of the honey super w/ the eggs in it. The queen will move up into the deep after a while and you can then remove the honey super from underneath.

When you say that these are not mediums but honey supers, does that mean that they are shallow supers?

You could take everything off of the bottom board, place a deep there, shake each frame of bees out of the honey supers, find the frames that the queen has laid in, place an excluder on the deep and set the honey super w/ the frames w/ eggs on top of the excluder. After some time the eggs will mature and emerge and you will have a honey super again.

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Yes they are shallow supers.

Full of honey?

These folks are making this quite complicated. All you need to do is add your deep of foundation at the top of the stack. If it is a natural swarm, they will go to the top to start building comb downward. In a day or two, set that deep off on a bottom board.

Walt

sqkcrk said:

You have a stack of full supers of honey sitting outside on a bottom board w/ a cover on top? Why?
Maybe this isn't a swarm after all, but bees robbing honey.

I see by your profile under Occupation it says "Beekeeper". Really? Come on now, you do something else now don't you? What is it?

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Why is my occupation any of your business?

wcubed said:

These folks are making this quite complicated. All you need to do is add your deep of foundation at the top of the stack. If it is a natural swarm, they will go to the top to start building comb downward. In a day or two, set that deep off on a bottom board.

Walt

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The first thing I thought of doing was to put two deeps under the supers and use a fume board to drive them down but just wanted to see if someone here may have had this problem before and had a better solution. I appreciate everyones help, and will keep you all posted on how it goes.