What to do with brood from shook swarm

[lebouche]

Hi,

I need to organise my bees as have let them build on frames without foundation and its hard to pull the frames out. The comb is also fairly old and laying pattern not good so would like to perform a shook swarm to help relieve varroa.
What do I do with the left over brood comb and is there anyway to let it hatch without destroying it?
Also the bees are very aggressive and chase a long way even into my house so need to re-queen and am wondering if this can all be done at once?

I need to sort these out with a view to selling up as am going abroad for a year.

Any advice would be much appreciated,

Thanks,

Duncan

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Kill the queen then shook swarm, introducing the queen at that time - it's what people do with packages - all the confusion makes them accept the queen easier. most of the phoretic mites should end up in the first batch of capped brood - take that off and destroy it or give them a dose of OA before any brood is capped

As for saving the brood - all you can do is put it on one of the other colonies (as long as they're strong enough)in a brood box separated with a QX . Not going to have much of an impact on the varroa levels though as all you've done is moved the problem to another hive

 

[For want of a better word]

feed to chickens

nos da

 

[Bushtuckaman]

Kill the queen then shook swarm, introducing the queen at that time - it's what people do with packages - all the confusion makes them accept the queen easier. most of the phoretic mites should end up in the first batch of capped brood - take that off and destroy it or give them a dose of OA before any brood is capped

As for saving the brood - all you can do is put it on one of the other colonies (as long as they're strong enough)in a brood box separated with a QX . Not going to have much of an impact on the varroa levels though as all you've done is moved the problem to another hive

Jenkins or someone else, could you please explain the need for a QX (as stated above) when placing the brood comb from a shook swarm on another colony please!?

 

[drex]

To stop the queen from that colony going up and laying in that comb, so that when all the brood has emerged from the old comb, 21 days later, you can then remove it.

 

[Bushtuckaman]

Got it, cheers. I was thinking that when I have used QX below a honey box it often takes quite a while for the bees to go through it! Is there not a risk the brood will chill before bees start go through to cover the brood comb. Or does the fact there brood comb above the QX encourage the bees through the QX more readily?

 

[wightbees]

Nurse bees normally cover it

 

[Teemore]

Got it, cheers. I was thinking that when I have used QX below a honey box it often takes quite a while for the bees to go through it! Is there not a risk the brood will chill before bees start go through to cover the brood comb. Or does the fact there brood comb above the QX encourage the bees through the QX more readily?

Its always a risk and it is one of the reasons why beekeepers are repeatedly advised to learn to read their bees. You have to judge whether there are enough bees in the host colony to cover the brood you are adding and further, you have to consider whether there are likely to be cold nights/days when the bees will cluster and possibly abandon outlying brood. This is more of a risk early in the season when the number of bees in a colony is comparatively low.

The presence of brood will generally attract bees, whether through a QX or bees from an inconveniently clustered swarm....

 

[Nige.Coll]

Doesn't putting the sealed brood frame into another colony kind of defeat the reason for doing the shook swarm in the first place?

Nice varroa bomb !