Changing hives

[Islandbees]

Hi all, probably should have been posting in this section before rather than general beekeeping. Hopefully this will be an easy one. I knocked a quick temporary hive together using less than adequate timber to house an AS in an emergency. I have since made a suitable hive with OMF to replace the temp one. Is there a specific time when I should swap them over? And is it simply moving all the frames and bees from one box to another? Thanks in advance

 

[abm]

As simple as that for me,

Move the old to one side, place the new inplace, then simply exchange frames.

Have some form of base below to make life easy to spot the queen should she fall whilst in swapping frames, with the residual bees left on the original hive, i simply move this away, and after a period they will return to the original location.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Do it while they are flying so that all the displaced bees find their way home. Move the hive aside and place the new box there. Find the frame with the queen and move that first if you are worried you might misplace her.

 

[Islandbees]

Thank you very much, shouldn't be too stressful.

 

[itma]

Just to make plain that you should aim to keep the frames in the same order and orientation (same faces together) UNLESS you are taking the opportunity to do some deliberate re-arrangement.

 

[mazzamazda]

I aim to do it quickly, as itma said, frames in the same order, empty hive upside down and a firm crack on the new hive moves all the bees quickly, you dont even need to worry about the queen.

 

[Islandbees]

Ok thanks. I plan to do it next week, if my virgin queen isn't mated I'll unite 2 colonies back into original hive but if she is successful it'll be a hive change.