Swarm dead after transporting in nuc???

[threehives]

Hi All

I caught a swarm last weekend and from the time i picked it up at about 11:00am, and transported it to my apiary and opened it up (about 4hrs) more than half of the bees were dead. I am not to sure why. It was not a hot day (about 20"c), I thought they may have sufficated but I had a look at the nuc today and it has about 1mm slit opening on one top edge so i don't think they would have sufficated? but the swarm was pretty large so maybe? It did sit in the car for about 1hr while i inspected some other hives, the windows were down and it was parked in the shade. Any thoughts.

Cheers Phill

[Acebird]

Bees cool their hive by fanning.  Imagine standing in a closet, door shut and a bunch of fans running.  You will get all the oxygen you need but you will croke from heat in a few minutes.  Moving bees is stressful.  Give them plenty of ventilation even in the fall.

[JackM]

I put screened bottoms in my Nuc for that reason.

[Beeboy01]

I always use screened inner covers when moving my hives and provide them with a lot of water. It doesn't take much to overheat a fresh caught swarm.
  Other things could of happened like some one sprayed the swarm before you collected it.

[BeeMaster2]

I had the same thing happen to me 2 years ago. I put a very large hive in a nuc whit just a 1 1/4" opening. I drove straight from the swarm location (30 minutes) and dropped them in a hive, Half of them were dead.
I immediately built several nucs with screened top and bottom boards so that it would not happen again.
Jim

[threehives]

thanks everyone, I will definitely modify my swarm boxes/nucs to allow more ventilation.

cheers phill