Howdy,
Just purchased 2 Italian queens from Wibanks and have placed them in 2 seperate hivs near wild bee colonies. One is a tree and the other is in a barn wall. Made some escape cones out of screen so the bees can exit but not enter. The queens are both in cages and each hive has probably 2 t0 3 hundred bees in them after 3 days. It seems the majority of the beees still hang onto the screen trying to get back in but they cant. Used 2 drawn frames and 8 foundation (pierco) in each one. Plan to check the queens in 2 days and release them if not already free.I will keep you posted and anyone seeing any mistakes i might have made --please let me know. Having a ball!!!!! :lol:
latebee,
Sounds like you have everything under control. Can't say I would have done it any different. Keep us posted.
Well it's about one month since I placed the caged Queens in front of the wild colonies,as per my previous post, and all is well. Each queen has been accepted and one of the hives has about 3 full frames of bees. The other (the one on the barn wall) has about a frame and a half with a lot of dead bees on the ground. Perhaps 3 to 4 hundred. And guess what? there are still hundreds of bees hanging on the screen cones trying to get back in to the old colony. Still enjoying myself. P.S. Got a call from a friend on August 1st to remove a small swarm from his front lawn-on a tree-I just held a medium super(thats all I had free)in front of the swarm for about 15 minutes(tired arms!) and they all came in.They were on the trunk of a very large maple tree,and the bark was so rough I didn't think I could scoop them off safely, even with a brush. :D