Moving a beehive.

There is a rule in moving a beehive. Less than 3 feet or more than 2 miles. Bees don't have GPS, instead the rely on navigating based on navigational markers in their flight path.
I HAD to move my hive. It is growing and will need another box on top this week and where they are is not an easy place to do this. So, tonight I tried one of the move techniques. They got moved perhaps 80' from the original location. The move went well until some of the guard bees got airborne. I stuffed grass in the entrance and they will have to dig through it in the morning. This triggers the rehoming sequence to a degree. I also leaned a 2x4 against the hive near the opening to also trigger the rehoming instinct. Likely, we will have a lot of bees at the old location. When they realize that the hive is not there, they will start flying around looking for it. Late tomorrow, I will put a hive base and empty box at the old location and then move it overnight to the new location.
Part of learning on my part. But the hope is that they mostly make it back and continue being a happy growing hive.

Tonight??? Not so happy. A handful of guard bees got airborne and bumped me in attempts to "defend the hive". No stings bu there was John running the yard swatting at potential stinging bugs... :)

If you see them circling the hive in the new location, that's them resetting (or setting, for new workers) their bearings to know how to get home.

As long as the queen is good, most of them should figure it out. You may lose a few, but if they're ready for a second super you're probably over 10k bees anyway, and even losing a couple thousand won't do any long term damage.

Have you seen larva in the new comb? As long as the queen is laying, that hive will be fine.

If you don't have one, you should get a bee jacket with a veil, and some good gloves. It makes dealing with them when they're upset much less stressful. You don't need a full suit, jeans tucked into your boots is plenty.

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The queen has been laying quite well. LOTS of capped brood.
I have a veil and all of the protective gear and will be inspecting again one afternoon this week. That will determine if another deep hive box goes on top.

Someone called my friend yesterday and said they had an "aggressive swarm" at their house. So he went over with a box to try to catch them. This is their "aggressive swarm."

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...6012f9f5bb.jpg

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:bigsmyl2:
Move them at night, when the bees are asleep.
See Tumbleweed.

Well, Saturday night I closed up the hive and moved them tot heir new location. I put some dead grass in the entrance with a 2x4 across the opening to help with the reorientation process.
Sunday, there were 2 to 3 dozen flying around the old location and the main hive had bees doing reorientation flights and some gathering and scouting once again. So late Sunday evening I put a hive base and small super where the hive used to be and most of the stragglers started landing and going in the box.
Now at 2:30AM I went out to block them in and move them to the new location and only 3 bees were present. I am unsure of the others.
All in all it went well and the main hive is buzzing away.

Sounds like success!

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I got up well before daylight yesterday morning to move a hive to my friends place about 4 miles away. There were more bees on the outside of the box than inside. It is just too hot.
I guess I will have to make a new hive from several of the frames in this hive.

I will be doing a hive inspection tomorrow afternoon. I strongly suspect that I'll be adding another deep hive body which isn't just quite as simple as putting a box with frames and foundation on top.

I worked 4 of my hives this morning. One was overloaded with bees and honey. I added a second deep brood box and a third honey super. The bees were quite aggressive and swarmed all over me. I am glad that I had a full suit on rather than the half top only. I may need to re queen this hive if they continue to be so aggressive.

I am still new to all of this but I've read where they can get touchy if the honey is involved. Sounds like you've got a great hive there.

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Originally Posted by farmerjim

I worked 4 of my hives this morning. One was overloaded with bees and honey. I added a second deep brood box and a third honey super. The bees were quite aggressive and swarmed all over me. I am glad that I had a full suit on rather than the half top only. I may need to re queen this hive if they continue to be so aggressive.

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I find that the more brood they have, and the deeper you dig into the brood, the more irritable they get. Smoke helps a lot, so I smoke heavier when I need to dig deep into the hives.

Last year we were getting into a hive that was completely full, looking for eggs and young brood, so we were rummaging through the bottom box, pulling out all the frames with brood in them. We forgot the smoker that day and said "Well, they're not all that aggressive, so it should be fine." They were not fine. I got stung twice that day, two of the total of 3 times I've been stung since I've started keeping

But as soon as we put the hive back together they chilled out immediately. Just think of it like a perfectly reasonable response to a predator, since predators like to eat honey and brood.

Smoke throws a wrench in that predator response, by sending them into "oh ****, the house is on fire!" mode, and covers up the "angry bee" pheromones they put out. If they can't smell the other bees getting upset, they don't get so upset.

I bought a second smoker to leave by the hives so we didn't have to do that again.

Also, the hotter it is outside, the more active and agitated they seem to get. Heat index was 108 yesterday when I went to work on them. I had to take a number of breaks to get out of the sun and take the suit off to cool off, which made it super slow. But almost all of the hives needed an additional box.

A couple of them needed a box before I thought they would, a week or so ago, so I didn't get to put a queen excluder in. I'll have to go back when it's cooler and I have some time to locate the queen and add the excluder.

The single box hive is the little new swarm we added yesterday. We snagged some young brood and honey from the more prolific hives to get them started.https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...fd87bee166.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...38fef0847d.jpg

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the aggressiveness might just have more to do with africanization, from what ive learned Florida bees all have African dan in them now and its quite possible Texas and Louisiana bees have africanization. I know for fact that the honey bees here in Tennessee are wimps compared to the bees I kept in Florida .
I have fresh memory of moving real full hive one cool Florida night and came real close to getting an ambulance trip to hospital because one zipper tin suit was not closed all the way. I got dozens of stings in short order but managed to drive 2 miles to drug store and gobbled down 1/2 dozen antihistamines before going into full anaphylactic shock. have yet to have much luck keeping bees here, the red wasps have wiped out my most recent attempts at bee keeping

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Originally Posted by farmbif

the aggressiveness might just have more to do with africanization, from what ive learned Florida bees all have African dan in them now and its quite possible Texas and Louisiana bees have africanization. I know for fact that the honey bees here in Tennessee are wimps compared to the bees I kept in Florida .
I have fresh memory of moving real full hive one cool Florida night and came real close to getting an ambulance trip to hospital because one zipper tin suit was not closed all the way. I got dozens of stings in short order but managed to drive 2 miles to drug store and gobbled down 1/2 dozen antihistamines before going into full anaphylactic shock. have yet to have much luck keeping bees here, the red wasps have wiped out my most recent attempts at bee keeping

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I've actually seen fewer wasps around my place since I started keeping bees.
As a side benefit, it's a lot easier to attack a wasp nest with a bee suit than the old way of spray and pray.

My bee suit is a double mesh jacket with veil/hat over a pair of short sleeve khaki coveralls with the legs tucked into my muck boots.
Protective but not too hot. This time of year heat index is 95 -120 in the shade and we haven't even got to the hot part of summer yet.
This is my second year with a hive, added a second deep box at the end of the season last year. Probably gonna add a shallow before long so I can get some honey this year. I doubt they'll be able to fill my flow hive deep super this year. My hive almost looks overcrowded as it is, but I kept sugar, syrup and protein patties under the top cover since the end of last summer. Already got 2-3 frames of capped honey in my top box

I grew up on a farm in Manitoba. We had a two and a half story, twenty five foot square house. That old farm house was not insulated and a swarm of bees had at sometime taken up residence in the front wall. Eventually, those bees would start to swarm and I watched my Dad follow the swarming bees until the Queen landed (usually on a branch). He would pick up and hold the Queen in his hand and the bees would collect on his arm. My Dad was five feet, nine inches tall and holding his arm, elbow braced on his hip, the swarm would look like a bag, almost reaching the ground. When he was satisfied he had most of the bees he would slowly walk over to an open hive box and gently brush the swarm into the box, close the lid and walk away. When he was catching the swarm, he did not use any kind of covering. When working the hives later he would wear a full suite. I do not recall him ever getting stung. Some years later, Dad set out to insulate that old house and when they pulled the old siding off, over two thirds of the front side of the house was filled with honey comb. They got something like fifteen of the old galvanized washtubs full of honey after the wax was removed.