13. Transferring Bees to Modern Hives

Sometimes it is necessary to transfer bees from box-hives or from hives with crooked combs. Select a warm day when nectar is coming in from the fields. Take the top off the box-hive and on it set a hive-body containing frames with sheets of foundation. If you can get from another hive a comb of brood, place it in the center of the frames of foundation. It may be necessary to nail strips of wood to close any opening at the top of the old hive or at the bottom of the hive-body containing frames of foundation if box-hive and hive-body are not the same size. Place a cover on the hive-body.

Smoke the entrance and drum on the old hive for ten minutes or more to induce the queen and bees to run up into the new hive-body. Slip a queen-excluder between the old and new hive and leave the hive for a week. Then look for eggs in the new hive-body. If they are not found, repeat the operation, because the queen is still in the old hive-body.

If eggs are found, leave the hive for two more weeks till the eggs laid in the old hive have developed bees. Then set the new hive which is on top of the old one on a bottom-board on the location of the old hive. Shake any bees left in the old hive in front of the new hive. Should the nectar flow stop during the transferring, it will be necessary to feed the bees to have them build combs from the foundation.

If bees are in a keg or crock, let them swarm and capture the swarm and place the hive with the swarm on the location where the keg or crock stood. Set the keg or crock at the side and rear of the new hive with the entrance facing away from the new hive. Gradually turn the entrance of the keg or crock to face the same direction as the new hive and about ten o'clock of the sixth day, when most of the field workers are in the fields, pick up the keg or crock and place it on the other side of the new hive and at the rear, with the entrance facing away from the new hive. This throws the field workers into the new hive. Repeat this operation every six days and in twenty-one days practically all the flying bees will be in the new hive. Jar what are left in front of the new hive. One can secure large crops of honey when bees let swarm have hives thus managed, because the force of bees is not divided.

Bees and honey can be taken from a tree or house without cutting either. Place a Porter bee-escape or a screen-wire cone with a quarter-inch hole at the tip over the entrance so that the bees must emerge through it. Set a hive of bees close to the bee-escape or cone. At the end of three weeks the flying force of bees will be in the hive on the outside and, if the Porter bee-escape or cone is removed, the bees from the outside hive will rob the bees in the tree or house and carry all the honey into the hive on the outside. If there is a nectar flow, the colony may not rob the bees in the house or trees till it ceases.

14. How to Build Strong Colonies for the Nectar Flow

Success with bees largely depends on building strong colonies for the nectar flow and then keeping them from swarming.

Since it takes three weeks to produce worker-bees from the laying of the eggs and about two weeks elapse from the emerging of the worker-bees from the cells until they become field workers, only the eggs laid about five weeks before the nectar flow produce bees ready for the nectar flow. Many people fail as beekeepers because they do not build the colonies for the nectar flow. The nectar flow from white clover in the northern states usually comes three weeks after fruit bloom.

Often there is a dearth of nectar between fruit bloom and white clover or the spring nectar flow, and so it is very essential that we see that every colony of bees has an abundance of honey-at least twenty-five pounds-to feed the brood after fruit bloom and to build the colony for the nectar flow. Without stores of honey bees may starve at this time.

So that the queen will have room to lay many eggs and the hive not get congested with young bees-largely the cause of swarming- it is necessary to give more room at fruit bloom. If given plenty of honey and room, with a prolific queen, it is possible for a hive to have 75, 000 or more bees when the nectar flow begins.

Bees left alone will often swarm at fruit bloom if in only one hive-body. The bees should be managed so that they never swarm. The more the bees swarm the less honey they produce.

It takes a frame of honey to produce a frame of brood and so the strength of the colony at the time of the nectar flow is largely determined by the amount of honey the bees have had to produce brood and the amount of room for the queen to lay. At fruit bloom, any queen-cells found in the brood-chamber should be destroyed and on it placed a hive-body with ten combs containing twenty-five or more pounds of honey saved from the year before.

If the beekeeper does not have combs of honey, he should place a hive-body containing ten frames of wired foundation on the brood-chamber and feed the bees an abundance of sugar syrup to have the bees draw out the foundation into combs and also to furnish feed for the brood.

If the hive is congested at the time of fruit bloom, it is well to lift one or more frames of brood up into this top hive-body which will induce the queen to begin laying eggs in the upper hive-body. The bees may be wintered in one hive-body and the honey stored in combs saved to be placed on the hives at fruit bloom. Some prefer to winter in two hive-bodies. Hives in the fall should contain fifty pounds of honey to carry the colonies through the winter and to provide for feeding the brood until fruit bloom. A frame for honey weighs about five pounds. Some beekeepers weigh the hives late in the fall to ascertain accurately the amount of honey they contain.