Moving frames of bees from one hive to another

[enchplant]

Hi folks,
This is such a great forum to get answers to all things bee. So my question for today is about moving frames with capped brood from a populous hive into a weaker hive to
1. Open up the broodnest in the populous hive and hence reduce swarming tendency,
2. Boost the weak hive.

So I tried this the other day and I don't think it was as successful as I had hoped. There were a lot of dead bees in the morning. So what is the trick to doing this properly? Do you spray the moving frame with sugar water? Do you smoke them extra to confuse the smell?

I hate killing bees. There are enough troubles for bees out there without me adding to it!

Richard

[Kathyp]

it's usually not a problem.  do it during the warmth of the day when most of the foragers are out.  the nurse bees won't fight.....at least not much.  when you move a frame take several out of the hive that will receive the frame.  that way you give yourself plenty of room to insert the frame and not roll the bees.  the outside frames usually don't have so many bees on them so you can pull a couple and move the other frames over to give yourself room.  after you put the new frame in, slide the other frames over and put the outside frame(s) back in.

iddee would say "always smoke".  it sure wouldn't hurt.  i would when scrambling hives around like that.

[enchplant]

Thanks Kathy,
That is good advice. You are always so kind to respond. I bet it was too early in the day when I moved them so perhaps it wasn't just nurse bees. In general I tend to smoke only as much as I need to keep bees from flying out and going crazy but perhaps it is better to smoke more in this case.
Richard

[D Coates]

I did that to one of my weaker hives twice yesterday from 2 different hives.  I find it simple as pie.  I do use some smoke and I do it in the middle of day.  The key for me is don't do it unless you have found the queen from the hive that you're stealing brood from.  If you accidently move a frame with the queen on there she'll be killed and there will be quite a bit of fighting as they sort out things.  The other downside is your other hive lost it's queen.  I had one highly populated hive yesterday I wanted to steal some brood from to avoid potential swarming urges but I couldn't find the queen (I did find the other 5 from the other hives I worked) so I didn't steal any capped brood.

Someone smarter than me said (paraphrasing), "Don't move frames of brood to another hive until you find the queen, NO EXCEPTIONS!"  A few years ago, out of frustration I was going to break this rule.  I reviewed the frames again for the 4th time as I'm standing above the open recipient hive.  Low and behold, there she was in all her marked glory...  I don't see how I could have missed her at all.  I took this as an opportunity to learn and decided to follow that rule.

I will steal a frame of brood when I am about to hive a swarm without regard to finding the queen.  What I do then is shake off all of the bees, then I use my bee brush to remove the stragglers.  The frame of brood is without bees and I head straight to the swarm location and use to anchor them in their new home.  I don't do this technique for boosting a hive with transfered brood frames because they need the attending nurse bees that the weaker hive probably won't be able to offer.  A swarm does have these unoccupied nurse bees.

[iddee]

A little smoke is all that is needed. Don't oversmoke.

I, unlike D. Coates, do remove the bees and only move the frame. I try to get a frame with as much capped brood as possible, so they don't have to be fed. The weak hive should be able to keep them warm fine. Also, they will emerge sooner and take less stores than uncapped brood.

[enchplant]

Great comments, really helpful!