Might be a silly question, I took the slide in board out of my sbb and now the bees are clustered under the bottom of the hive, looking to put the slide in board back in for winter, but the bees will not move off the screened bottom?? anyone else go through this? I have put in the plywood and then opened it up a little thinking they will head in the entrance but they just keep hangin out there, do I have to physically brush them off?
If we knew where you were, we might could help. 95 F., or sub freezing would call for different actions.
As iddee says, the answer does depend a bit upon where you live.
I'll assume you live in the north. I've had this problem before and the best I could come up with is smoke; LOTs of smoke. The bees are reluctant to leave the bottom of the screen without a lot of smoke. I tried the brush, it just didn't work. Smoke works real well. Now the problem is the weather. You need to do this on a WARM day because the bees will need to be able to fly out from under the screen and find the main entrance. They can't do that effectively on a cold day. Ideally 65F+ and sunny.
Yep, the weather will be a big factor here. If not a ton of bees and they act gentle you could gently move handfuls onto the bottom board. If a good many & you have a bee vac...
Could also use a small as in tiny amount of bee repellant strategically placed to oust them & of course try smoking them first as suggested.
...JP
I've had this problem before too. Seems to happen more when installing bees to a new hive with screened bottom open. I just smoke them heavy and use a bee brush to move them off. You have to install your slide in tray fast though. Leave the tray in for a couple of days and they start using the entrance again.
Had the same thing happen during the hot part of the summer, what i discovered was the hive plans i used showed a removable sbb and a solid bottom.What a mess up.And these bees were stubborn they did not want to move,so back to the drawing board removed all frames and turned bottom upside down then removed sbb and shook bees off into another empty hive. " well it was the first hive i built"
Will not make that mistake again! :?
Take the hive off the SBB. Then just knock them into the hive and put it back together.
put a tray in...
Thanks everyone, the original problem was that when I put the tray back in the bees that were on the underside were trapped. I ended up trying smoke, moved a few but not to many, it is starting to get cold here, and was afraid the loss of the bees under would be hard on the hives. I waited and went back on a warmer day, still the same, tried the smoke again, same result, I brushed a few off, and slid the trays in. That took care of most of them, so I went back on a colder day with a box, took the tray out and brushed the remaining bees into the box, then dumped them on the landing board, seems to have worked. Dismantling the hive was a option as well, but at this late in the season, the least disruption to the hive as a whole was the way I decided to go, more work for me, but less for the bees. Maybee.
Thanks again. :-D