Recent content by smarty

It has been shown that a light 1:1, or even lighter syrup, is optimal for comb building. However, I have been taught that when bees swarm they feast on honey before departing the hive and use this to quickly build comb upon arrival in their new hive. Honey is a lot thicker than a light syrup or...

DIY version?

🤦🏼‍♂️

On Thursday I witnessed a large swarm entering an existing occupied hive. The colony in the hive was a split with the overwintered queen that I made about a month ago and was building up nicely. Has anyone else experienced such a thing and what happens the queens in such a situation?

Thank you all for your help. Top it is.😊

Thanks a lot. It won’t be possible to find the queen though as crossed comb and total mess of comb inside which is one of the reasons for this change over. Still top?

I have been reading on the forum about other methods other than shook swarm on how to move bees from one sized hive/ frames to another. Is it better to put the new box with drawn comb on the top or bottom? Which direction will the queen tend to gravitate to? The existing hive does have capped...

Interesting, thanks for the explanation. Here is another method I heard about today, in photo form: