dumb question

ayyon2157 · March 19, 2007, 11:16:46 PM

Hi everyone:

My only remaining colony died early last winter, leaving about 100 lbs of honey in 3 full depth hive bodies.

It seems to me that if I open it up that there will soon be a lot of bee traffic robbing it out, and can I just screen the entrance during "heavy traffic" catching the bees which happened to be inside at the time, introduce a queen and have a low cost colony?

ayyon2157

ski · March 19, 2007, 11:42:51 PM

Hmmm foragers vs nurse bees. Once out in the world can they go back? :-\

buzzbee · March 19, 2007, 11:47:14 PM

Quote from: ski on March 19, 2007, 11:42:51 PM

Hmmm foragers vs nurse bees. Once out in the world can they go back? :-\

Sure,swarms do it all the time ;)

Understudy · March 19, 2007, 11:50:44 PM

You may not going to get a hive out of that. However you could use the honey as bait for a beelining. When the bees come for the honey mark them with powdered sugar and follow them back to their hive. Then you can give them a new home.

Sincerely,
Brendhan

Drone · March 20, 2007, 08:06:07 AM

No, that probably wouldn't work. The new bees would need to raise a queen to start a colony, but they would need brood to do this.

How long has the hive been dead?

I think I would harvest some of the honey and start over with a package of bees.

-John

Drone · March 20, 2007, 10:31:59 AM

Doh!

Sorry, I missed the "introduce a queen" part.

I guess that might work, but I'm not sure if you would be starting strong enough to build sufficient numbers.

Where are you located?

By the way - I'm new at this so I would listen to the experts (you know who they are!) before taking any of my advice. I'm deep into the learning curve though.

Scadsobees · March 20, 2007, 04:17:31 PM

I've never tried it but...

You would need to capture MANY MANY robbers for it to work. Unless you have an apiary nearby you probably won't get near enough. If you have any other hives, then just do a split.

If you did get many robbers, it might work but it would be tricky...you would probably need to get tons of bees in there, close it up, move it miles away, leave them closed up for about 3 days without overheating them, then introduce a queen in a cage. But you'd probably end up sacrificeing a perfect good queen.

If you left them there, you would need to close them up for 3+ days, open them up add the queen and hope they all didn't fly away, and then close them back up again for a day or two.

I think that foragers can go back to be nurses if they need to .

Dicey at best.

Rick

Mici · March 20, 2007, 04:46:04 PM

Quote from: Scadsobees on March 20, 2007, 04:17:31 PM
I think that foragers can go back to be nurses if they need to .

Dicey at best.

Rick

though nurses do fly-swarming, i am almost sure a forager can't turn back into a nurse, why? because the glanse that secrets the royal gelle stops working at certain age, that is, when the bee turns into a forager-perfectly normal and logical, if there is no need to waste the energy, why would it work...
so..this wouldn't work, i'm almost sure

KONASDAD · March 20, 2007, 05:04:16 PM

Aren't packages just a bunch of bees and a new queen? How is this different?

Mici · March 20, 2007, 05:22:32 PM

it's a bunc of mixed bees, so you have young and older bees. although i am not aware of how they make package bees but i assume they do the package like you would do a nuc, we have a special expression for nucs made this way, but i can't remeber the english word. the rough translation would be brush-off-nuc. let's say during extraction you would brush the bees of the comb into a box, add them a queen, voila a package!

Michael Bush · March 20, 2007, 08:35:14 PM

The robbers will not quickly accept the queen and you may end up with a dead queen. You don't know who the bees belong to, there may be a domestic hive nearby or they might be feral. you'd have to close them up for 72 hours to get them to reorient while providing enough ventilation they don't die and they are usually pretty determined to leave, so many will die.