Can you move honey bees from one hive to another?

[glennj3cub]

Good Morning on the coolest morning in South Carolina this year!
I have 4 hives and started with Honey Bees 3 season ago. Near the end of this season one of my hives (I assume it was mine) swarmed. I recaptured them from a local fruit tree in my yard.
They are doing well enough but in order to make them a little stronger as well as give them more honey, I was wondering if I can take a full cone with bees on it and place it into the weaker hive?
I have checked on them and did not see a queen nor any brood at that time. If it warms up today I may check them again.
By the way, I originally put them in just a couple of shallow supers with a cone of honey, until I got my deep super in and ready. So now the deep super is on bottom with just wax foundation and the bees are in the shallow super on top. Wondering should I reverse them so they will migrate to the top (deep super)?

Thanks for you help!

[Dallasbeek]

The short answer to your question is yes, you can add bees, honey, brood and comb to your weak hive.

But it sounds like you have given them more space than they'll be able to handle.  I'll leave it to Michael Bush and others to expand on the above, because they have a lot more experience and I'm still learning this craft.

Good luck with your bees.

[Maggiesdad]

My name's Glen and my Dad had a J3 and this is my first year with bees -how cool is that!

I'll leave the answers for those more experienced, too...

[Dallasbeek]

Good job, Glen.  When in doubt, defer to more experienced beeks.

[BeeMaster2]

I agree, the answer is yes, I do it when ever needed. If you leave the frame out for a little in an empty box or just leaned up against a hive the field bees will go home and the nurse bee will stay on the frame.
It really does sound like your bees have way too much space. I would remove most of the frames that the bees are not covering and reduce it to one box or if small enough, a nuc. I just removed all but one super, removed 2-3 supers per hive, for all of my hives. I have 2 medium boxes for each hive now except one. It was weak and I added several frames of bees and a large ball of bees from MY OH hive (that I just took apart,) to it. It is now a single medium. I now have hives that are all packed full of bees for the winter.
Jim

[Dallasbeek]

Glen3cub, see the thread SPACE MANAGENENT started by Michael Bush in this same section on General Beekeeping.  MB makes the case sawdustmakr and I are referring to about there being way too much space in your hives, based on what you wrote in your OP.

[sc-bee]

Yes Glenn too much space. Our flow here in my area of SC has been long over so there will be no more drawing comb. Where in Sc re you located
Adding a frame of bees is no problem. Some folks shake the bees on the ground in front of the have you wish to put them in. Then place the frame in the weak hive. This puts the foragers in the air to return to old donor hive and the nurse bees crawl in the weak hive.