Mixing bees from different hives.

Richard M · December 04, 2015, 06:49:58 PM

Having more or less given up on getting a swarm this year (every man and his dog are on the local beekeepers website swarms collected page - bloody Flowhive craze!!!); I'm thinking about starting a new hive from scratch.

I have full ownership of one hive, half share in 3 others; all are going OK but 2 better than the others, and I want this one to start off reasonably strong, so whilst I could do a split from one, I want to avoid knocking any one hive back, especially at this time of year when everything's in flower.

I was watching a youtube video on making up packages (which are not available here in Tasmania), I saw them mixing bees from literally hundreds of hives, without starting World War 3.

If I were to grab a frame of bees and brood etc from each of my other hives and put them in the same box, requeen them and quickly whisk them away to another site a few km away for a week or two, so they don't fly back home, will they behave or am I asking for mayhem?

GSF · December 04, 2015, 09:44:55 PM

What has always worked for me is to wait until the foragers are out foraging. Then make sure the queen isn't on one of the frames before you move them. Also, if it's just a bunch of nurse bees in there you won't have to relocate them because they're not familiar with the outside world. Something to be concerned with is robbing. Making a small hive like that may open them up to being robbed out.

sc-bee · December 05, 2015, 01:36:39 AM

You will get a lot of different answers on this one. But the rule of thumb I go buy is mix bees from at least three colonies and they don't fight because of the confusion. Just make sure you don't get the queen and I like to move them away to another yard. Some folks don't move and allow extra bees for drift.

Also..You will see the shake method where bees are shaken from the frames on the ground in front of the hive. The idea is the dislodged foragers will get airborne and return to the parent hives and the nurse bees will march in the hive you are putting together. Again watch for the queen.

And some folks will tell you it don't matter...I shy away from that advice ... just me...

And remember if you find one queen in a hive, don't get complacent and not look the other frames. More hives than folks think have more than one queen. I made that mistake this year on a re-queen and lost my new bought queen.

rwlaw · December 05, 2015, 08:18:35 AM

"Bloody flow hive craze". Love it! Got the same thing going on over too. I got a call from a friend that went something like this. " His friend has lots of flowers in her yard and she wants to put a flow hive there, would the bees that work the flowers and put it in the her box instead of taking it to back to their home?" I just said that ain't gonna happen, and had good laugh for the day.
Back to the question, a frame of brood and bees from the two stronger hives will work. A frame of bees and a shake of bees from another frame of brood from each hive will equal about a three pound package. One thing to remember, you will have a package primarily made from nurse bees and little foragers so make sure there is a frame of honey and a frame of pollen so the start doesn't suffer a set back as the nurse bees need nutrition as they mature as well as feeding brood after the queen is released.
Another thought, sure everyone and their brother is setting out swarm boxes, but do they know what they're doing? See if you can make a better swarm box better than theirs!

sc-bee · December 05, 2015, 03:21:45 PM

Timing is also a factor. If you are in a flow less apt to fight. So mixing two in a flow vs three not as much an issue...And also all being queenless they are less apt to fight...cause you added the caged queen.

Richard M · December 07, 2015, 02:43:37 AM

Quote from: rwlaw on December 05, 2015, 08:18:35 AM
"Bloody flow hive craze". Love it! Got the same thing going on over too. I got a call from a friend that went something like this. " His friend has lots of flowers in her yard and she wants to put a flow hive there, would the bees that work the flowers and put it in the her box instead of taking it to back to their home?" I just said that ain't gonna happen, and had good laugh for the day.
Back to the question, a frame of brood and bees from the two stronger hives will work. A frame of bees and a shake of bees from another frame of brood from each hive will equal about a three pound package. One thing to remember, you will have a package primarily made from nurse bees and little foragers so make sure there is a frame of honey and a frame of pollen so the start doesn't suffer a set back as the nurse bees need nutrition as they mature as well as feeding brood after the queen is released.
Another thought, sure everyone and their brother is setting out swarm boxes, but do they know what they're doing? See if you can make a better swarm box better than theirs!

The whole flowhive thing has been a real phenomenon hasn't it.

A friend of mine, who runs a township library knew SFA about bees and just ordered one anyway - later asked me if the bees would come and live in it when she set it up in her back yard.

On the positive side, she's also partly responsible for running adult education courses and a woman of action, so she contacted local beekeepers and got them to run 1-day hands-on intro beekeeping course, ( https://www.facebook.com/HuonLINC/photos/a.127174883975733.21478.117397188286836/1204130699613474/?type=3&fref=nf&pnref=story) initially for 15 or so people, but so popular, that they had to lay on 2 or 3 more sessions.

I get the definite impression that the Flowhive publicity has engendered a high level of interest in beekeeping and if only 40% of those "sucked in" actually stick with it, whether with flowhives or conventional setups, that's going to be a good thing. I'd like to get one myself as it would be great for my indoor setup but I'm not about to pay $500 for the privilege - my guess is there'll be plenty on the second hand market in a year or two.

I've had ONE call for a swarm so far this summer and as luck would have it, I was busy in the smallest room in the house when the call came on my mobile - rang back literally 3 mins later but they'd found someone else. I had another call this morning but when I got there and almost blundered into it in shorts & T-shirt, it was actually a European Wasp nest.

I've had 2 bait hives out, with Swarm Commander in them since end of October but so far nothing doing. One is located in a tree within yards of where we collected a cast swarm this time last year.

So unless there's a miracle in the next week or so, I think I'll be ordering in a Queen and making up my own new composite colony.

Naturally, The Law According To Murphy makes it a near certainty that an eye-wateringly huge swarm will turn up 18 hours after I've set it up and introduced the new queen.

Michael Bush · December 07, 2015, 09:01:35 AM

Way before the "flow hive craze" I saw posts on the various forums that are just as bad or worse. One was something like "I bought a queen and a hive, now what do I do? Will the bees in the cage with the queen start the colony?" or a guy who was selling queens and shipping them with drones in attendance, in case she was a virgin... Ignorance is ignorance...

But the idea of mixing bees works like this. The more confusion you have the less fighting you have, so when you mix bees from two colonies they often fight. When you mix bees from three or more colonies they seldom fight. Smoke adds to confusion.

Richard M · December 08, 2015, 08:20:56 PM

Quote from: Michael Bush on December 07, 2015, 09:01:35 AM
Way before the "flow hive craze" I saw posts on the various forums that are just as bad or worse. One was something like "I bought a queen and a hive, now what do I do? Will the bees in the cage with the queen start the colony?" or a guy who was selling queens and shipping them with drones in attendance, in case she was a virgin... Ignorance is ignorance...

But the idea of mixing bees works like this. The more confusion you have the less fighting you have, so when you mix bees from two colonies they often fight. When you mix bees from three or more colonies they seldom fight. Smoke adds to confusion.

Oh yeah - I'm not pointing any fun/blame/whatever at Flowhives and their designers, but I definitely think that the impact has been really dramatic and especially with the clever marketing which essentially went viral, there's probably been a lot more people jumped impulsively into beekeeping (without giving too much thought to the logistics) at 9.15AM, after seeing the really effective link on Facebook (at 9.00AM) than would normally be the case.

I must admit that when I first saw the FB posts, I thought it was a hoax.

Michael Bush · December 10, 2015, 11:24:40 AM

>I must admit that when I first saw the FB posts, I thought it was a hoax.

When I first saw the video, I did too.

mike17l · January 02, 2016, 01:59:34 AM

Any luck with you split?

Richard M · January 03, 2016, 01:20:24 AM

Quote from: mike17l on January 02, 2016, 01:59:34 AM
Any luck with you split?

I haven't done it yet - I had an overnight stay at the hospital ER following nasty reaction to a sting that left me wondering for a while if I was going to stay with bees, so a four week hiatus in hands-on beekeeping activities.

Following a visit to an immunologist at which a desensitisation course was arranged, I've decided that YES I am sticking with it.

Once I've acquired a new queen, I'll be going ahead with the split, which will hopefully be in the next week or two, question now is what variety of queen we should get.

All our hives bar one have Italian queens but I'm wondering about maybe having a crack with Caucasians; our none Italian hive, which was a swarm we caught last year contains fairly dark bees and I'm wondering if they're Caucasians - this is our best performing hive by far but I don't know if that's because it's a newer queen or if it's because it's from a feral hive better adapted to our local conditions or if it's because it's a Caucasian from an apiary.

There's also a breeder I can source Carniolans from - I wonder?

Here's our average climate data:

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_094029.shtml