Squatters or what?

[Margaret Elisabeth]

Yesterday after doing my inspection I found there was a cluster of bees under hive no 1.(read my what I did in the apiary today post for more detail.) as I had transferred queen and brood frame to a new hive I wonder if these bees are return flyers who have got confused or a cast from someone else's apiary.
Any Ideas?

 

[enrico]

This is a common fault with OMF floors
The bees miss the landing pad, fly underneath and then can't understand why when they can see their mates above they can't reach them. Put a block of some sort from the landing board down to the floor, to stop the bees flying straight under. Check the clump underneath just to make sure there is no queen in it as sometimes you can get her under there from an aborted swarm. In winter this can be a real problem as those clusters of bees will die in the cold and deplete your hive numbers
E

 

[Margaret Elisabeth]

Thank you Enrico. any ideas as to how I can get them to come out and into a nuc, box I left them there overnight with a poly nuc and frames jambed in between the hive supports. there seem to be a line of guards along the base of the floor. I am just about to go and check that the queen did not abscond between the hive and the nuc I transferred to for the short journey to the new hive.

 

[Fraise]

If you tipped the frames when doing the inspection some nectar or liquid honey may have dripped onto the OMF. The bees underneath would be trying to retrieve it.

 

[Margaret Elisabeth]

Mystery solved.
The queen is in the new hive.
There were very few bees at the rear of hive 1 so I could see clearly. The OMF. has come adrift possibly due to the sudden change in temperature and everything drying out over the last week or so. Now to cure the problem and prevent it happening on the new hive I think I will add a thin strip of wood and nail it. But how to do this with a box full of bees in residence is a greater problem Suggestions please! Sensible ones preferred.

 

[galileo]

Get everything prepared so you can be quick and do the job when they're still at home. Put the roof on a box of some kind (strong one), crownboard on the roof at a slight angle, hive on crownboard, modify the floor, then reverse the above.

An old sheet makes a very effective skirt when pinned to a stand, to prevent forager and orientation undershoot.

 

[Margaret Elisabeth]

Thanks for the tips. I think I might split the colony again as there are a number of queen cells. With some of the bees in a Poly nuc. and the rest in a Corex nuc. I can take my time and move the floor away from their hive site, then I can bang some nails in without upsetting them too much. thanks again especially for the tips about stopping the undershot problem.

 

[Margaret Elisabeth]

Well job done, though they did not like it one bit, I got buzzed at quite a bit but no stings. My NLP helps to keep me calm and I think that helps the bees to cope better with disturbance. There was much confusion when I brushed the bees that were clustered under the floor into the brood box and a lot flew out before they could be covered. A queen cell fell off in the process and so it has been deposited in the poly nuc and the nuc left at the previous back door on top of a stool which takes it to about the right height. There are a lot of very confused bees but they seemed to be settling down before i went out to a gardeners meeting tonight. We will see what tomorrow brings.

 

[richardbees]

glad it's sorted Elizabeth...but what's NLP?

Enrico's right, with omf it's now necessary to have a skirt around hice stands, at least on the front.