Advice please - Artificial swarm when Bailey changing and unmarked queen

[Loolabelle1]

All, I would appreciate your advice on my following problem. We were in the process of moving our bees from a small National BB to a 14 x 12 so we started a Bailey change. Due to bad weather we were only able to check both boxes yesterday. Queen is laying well in the new 14 x 12 and there is old brood with a small amount of new brood in the old box. Having never seen our queen she is not marked. We smoked under the boxes before we opened them, which will hopefully have pushed her up into the 14 x 12. We then changed the boxes over and put a QE between the two. The plan was then to check next week to make sure she was laying in the 14 x 12 only. However they decided to also make a queen cell which we broke down but they are obviously planning to go.

I have researched the procedure for carrying out an AI without seeing the queen, which requires shaking all the bees off all the combs, except don't shake the frame with the QC, into the bottom box, put a QE between the two and all the frames with brood in the top box, except leave one with ELB with the queen downstairs. The following morning all the house bees should be up with the brood so you have flying bees and queen in the bottom box. However, I have the problem of already having another BB in place, which theoretically means I would end up with a tower of three brood boxes. Could I take the small brood box and put it on a separate stand for one night. If I am reasonably sure the queen is not in it when I check I don't have to shake the bees from that one, so I assume there would be enough house bees already in that box to keep them warm overnight? When I separate the two other brood boxes the following day, I could then put the small brood box with the other brood, so would end up with the queen and flying bees on the original site and two brood boxes with brood on the new site. Once all the bees had hatched from the old small brood box I could then just remove. Would that work please? My added problem is my bee buddy who does the heavy lifting is away this weekend and I will need to do this on my own and I don't think I could lift high enough to stack the three brood boxes, plus a super on top of each other. Any advice would be much appreciated. many thanks and sorry it is so long winded[/I]

 

[drstitson]

when you did the bailey change why didnt you shake all the bees into the nex box then and then put the old box above the QE. would've sorted everything in one step (although likely to have QCs above QE to deal with after a few days).

 

[Loolabelle1]

Thanks, we followed advice from someone who had been keeping bees for years and he said this was the best way