OSB to National

[King Scavenger]

Hi all. My bees have wintered with a national brood box at the bottom and an OSB box on top.I now want to get them out of the OSB and into the Nat. brood box. I assume that I should swap the boxes over so the OSB is under the Nat. brood box so they should move up into the nat. box? Am I correct ?

 

[pargyle]

Hi all. My bees have wintered with a national brood box at the bottom and an OSB box on top.I now want to get them out of the OSB and into the Nat. brood box. I assume that I should swap the boxes over so the OSB is under the Nat. brood box so they should move up into the nat. box? Am I correct ?

OSB box ? Is this just a national box made out of OSB (Sterling board) or are you talking about a Rose hive ?

Firstly, is there any brood in the top box ? If so then the first thing to do is get that into the box that you want to keep - will the frames fit ? If so move the frames with brood down into the bottom box replacing any without brood in the bottom, then put a clearer board between the two boxes, leave it overnight and the bees will be out of the top box and you can take it away -simple !

If the frames won't fit then you need to either find the queen or make sure she is not in the top box and then put a queen excluder between the two, put the queen in the bottom box below the queen excluder then - wait till all the brood has emerged in the top box then clearer board as above ...

 

[King Scavenger]

Many thanks pargyle. I was talking about rose boxes as that was the way I started but I am now changing to national. I will take your advice by doing it by making sure that the queen is in the nat box and put a queen excluder between the boxes . I just love learning more and more about keeping bees .