[Nhaupt2]

I have a hive that seems to be just not thriving. In tired of opening it up and seeing them not growing. I'm going to shake them out and put a swarm I just captured in it's place. What should I do with the small amounts of brood that is still In the weak hive. Is it a bad idea to add it to another hive? I'm leary of doing this because something is causing the hive to not build up, but I'm not sure what. I haven't seen any signs of foulbrood, but who knows. If I just shake em and dont re use them I have frames of rotting brood laying around. What's the procedure here?

 

[beemandan]

I would toss it.

 

[vtbeeguy]

First and most important thing to know is what's the mite count? Or at minimum what have you done for treatments and when. Hive not building up with no signs of foulbrood most like varroosis. It's shortening the lives of the bees making it impossible for them to ever get ahead. Guess you could just pinch the queen and do a newspaper combine with that swarm. Then treat them both immediately after combine. Or if you can do OAV give them each a shot before the combine.

 

[squarepeg]

if the weak colony has diseases/pests and you shake them out near other hives they could drift into those other hives and transmit the problem. best to find out for sure why the hive is not thriving and then decide on a course of action.

 

[beemandan]

if the weak colony has diseases/pests and you shake them out near other hives they could drift into those other hives and transmit the problem. best to find out for sure why the hive is not thriving and then decide on a course of action.

The best advice.

 

[squarepeg]

if it ends up just being a sorry queen/colony...

pinch the queen, go back a week later and pinch any emergency queen cells, go back two weeks later and confirm all the capped brood has emerged.

at that point you can euthanize by freezing, co2, ect., or,

you can take them somewhere isolated from other bees and shake them out. it's not likely that many of them will find their way to new colony.

this way you don't have to mess with cleaning the remaining brood out of the frames.