Comb in roof space

[Davidwd]

Rehived a swarm from my hive a few weeks ago, added a crown board, empty super with feeder in but left the other hole open in the crown board (mistake). Now they have built all wild comb around the feeder hanging down from the roof not in the frames.

How do I move them into the main hive without them clearing off?

Thank you
David

 

[chris600uk]

my two pence worth

I'm no expert but it seems to me that if the Queen is still in the brood box, and the Q Excluder is ok, then all you have to do is cut the comb off, and brush the bees back into the super, then replace the crown board with another one you just happened to have just for this eventuality.

 

[Davidwd]

All the brood, queen, eggs etc are all in the roof, so I would end up destroying the whole nest.

D

 

[Queens59]

All you can do it cut it off, and try to put the larger bits into frames in the BB - holding in place with elastic bands/wire or string. Then shake all the bees into it and close them up. If you see HM keep her safe while it goes on - if you have a queen cage or matchbox? If you are VERY worried they will abscond then a QE under the BB should help, but only for 2-3 days.

 

[Davidwd]

Many thanks,

I will try it.

David

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

An interesting situation -If the comb is attached to roof you could turn it all upside down, fabricate a board to fit over the inverted roof to enable you to put a brood box over the lot with a hole-less crown board and roof over and wait for the queen to move up into the brood, then excluder under, wait for brood to emerge before going back to a normal setup.
But far easier would be to find the queen, put her back in the brood box with QX over, get rid of feeder board and leave the bees sort it out.
I had something the same last year but with a queen laying up in the super it all worked out in the end .
Edit: Just realised you won't need a fabricated board thingy because it's all inside the super - same thing invert put brood over and wait for the queen to move up

 

[astabada]

Happened more or less the same thing to me last month. Just cut the comb and place it in an empty frame and put some masking tape around to hold it in place. The bees will attach it to the frame and eat the tape to free any cell you covered with it. More or less like this, but make sure you don't do it with bees on it! (I got the picture from google!)

 

[Davidwd]

Brilliant, thank you

D

 

[alanf]

All the brood, queen, eggs etc are all in the roof, so I would end up destroying the whole nest.

Had a similar situation last year. This was comb in an eke used for an apiguard tray, they started with wild comb hanging from the crown board and packing it with stores. First try when the treatment was finished was to make some space in the brood box (foundation, no comb available) put in another crown/feeder board over the brood box, empty super box above, then the crown on top with wild comb stores hanging.

I hoped they would move the stores downstairs as you might when cleaning wild comb or empty supers. What they actually did was move up with the queen into the space, added to the wild comb at various angles and started brooding up top. Some bees play by their own rules. By then it was October and I had to think about how they would go into winter, they were producing winter bees by then that I didn't want to lose.

No time to let them move themselves, best option I could come up with was to remove them downstairs myself. I detached the comb and suspended it in frames with Royal Mail issue rubber bands and placed them back down in the brood box. Gave them a super of comb to play with and enough 2:1 syrup over the crown board (no other holes) to complete filling it and see them through winter.

Whatever ill effects that had, it didn't stop them. Within a couple of weeks they had built out the transferred comb to virtually full frames. It was good enough to have been using it as normal brood comb this year. By spring, they were bursting at the seams and by the end of March had started swarm cells. As I said, they have their own rules.