Tag: honeybee

Bailey Comb Change

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This sounds like quite a complex procedure however its really not. This is a way of changing all the frames in one go.

You will need a new brood box with a full set of new frames and foundation. Place this new box on top of your existing brood box, put a feeder and syrup feed on top and let the bees start drawing out the comb. Once the bees have drawn out some of the comb find the queen and place her up in the top brood box. Put a queen excluder in-between the two boxes, so that the queen cannot get back down.

You can use a split board if you have one; this is a queen excluder with an entrance on it. If you do use a split board open the entrance and close off the bottom entrance. You can, if you prefer, rotate the floor so the bottom entrance is now at the other side, the bees will leave by that entrance but return to the other side of the hive and find the new entrance above. Close the bottom entrance the following day. If you decide to not rotate the floor but just close the entrance in the position it is in, the bees will find the exit so don’t worry.

Equally, if you don’t have a split board just use a queen excluder and the original entrance. The advantage of using the split board is that the bees won’t travel through the lower box storing pollen around the brood that is still down there. Instead, they will store pollen in the top box where the queen is now laying. Make sure you put a feeder with syrup on the bees and keep feeding for as long as needed.

After 3 weeks all the brood will have emerged from the frames in the lower box and you can now remove it along with the queen excluder. The wax can be rendered or burn along with the frames.

How do I change my Brood Frames

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Brood comb must be replaced regularly in the hive to help with colony hygiene and disease control. Opinions on this topic do vary but the NBU (National Bee Unit) say that brood comb should be used for no more than 3 years. The old comb should be rendered or burnt.

There are a few different ways you can change the comb. Below I have detailed 3 common one. The one thing they all have in common is that you will need to offer your bees syrup to help then to draw out the new foundation you have given them.

Replacement of just 1 third of your brood frames early in the season

It is suggested that you replace 1/3 of your brood frames each year, this way you will never have frames older than 3 year.

This is relatively easy to do but its not a quick way of changing frames. The process involves you gradually moving the frames you want to change so that at the end of the season they are sitting at the outer walls of the brood box.   The following spring you can remove these frames and replace them with new frames and foundation. Remember to feed them syrup, especially important if changing the frames in spring when the season is only just getting going.

Bailey Comb Change

This sounds like quite a complex procedure however its really not. This is a way of changing all the frames in one go.

You will need a new brood box with a full set of new frames and foundation. Place this new box on top of your existing brood box, put a feeder and syrup feed on top and let the bees start drawing out the comb. Once the bees have drawn out some of the comb find the queen and place her up in the top brood box. Put a queen excluder in-between the two boxes, so that the queen cannot get back down.

You can use a split board if you have one; this is a queen excluder with an entrance on it. If you do use a split board open the entrance and close off the bottom entrance. You can, if you prefer, rotate the floor so the bottom entrance is now at the other side, the bees will leave by that entrance but return to the other side of the hive and find the new entrance above. Close the bottom entrance the following day. If you decide to not rotate the floor but just close the entrance in the position it is in, the bees will find the exit so don’t worry.

Equally, if you don’t have a split board just use a queen excluder and the original entrance. The advantage of using the split board is that the bees won’t travel through the lower box storing pollen around the brood that is still down there. Instead, they will store pollen in the top box where the queen is now laying. Make sure you put a feeder with syrup on the bees and keep feeding for as long as needed.

After 3 weeks all the brood will have emerged from the frames in the lower box and you can now remove it along with the queen excluder. The wax can be rendered or burn along with the frames.

Shook Swarm

This is a very effective way of quickly changing all your brood frames and will result in removing all pathogens from the hive, it can however be quite stressful for the bees, so you need to ensure you have a good quantity of young bees in the colony before you carry out the shook swarm. 

The best time to do the shook swarm is late spring, you should have plenty of young bees by this point. The method is quite simple: Lift your brood box off the floor and move it to one side. Place a queen excluder on the floor then place a a new clean brood box, containing brand new frames and foundation, on top of the queen excluder. Remove 5 or 6 of the center frames to create a gap.  Now go to your original brood chamber and remove the first frame. Shake all the bees off this frame into the gap you created in your new brood box. Repeat with all the frames, look for the queen as you go. Personally I would lift the queen off the frame and place her into the new brood box, you can just shake her in if you prefer. If you didn’t see the Queen throughout the procedure do check the walls of the old brood box and make sure she is not there.  Shake any bees left on the brood box walls into your new box too.

Gently replace the 5 or 6 frames back into the gap in your new brood box, place the crownboard on top along with a feeder full of syrup.  Keep this feeder topped up until your bees have sufficient stores in their new frames.  The queen excluder on the floor will stop the queen from leaving and taking the bees with her. Once your queen is happily laying you can remove the queen excluder (2 weeks is a good bet)

The old frames you removed that have stores in them can be extracted and the wax rendered, any frames with brood in are best burnt. If you do extract stores from these frames, make sure you are confident they are stores of honey and not syrup that you may have offered in your winter preparations.

Carrying out a shook swarm on a colony with a good volume of young bees will very quickly work the new foundation in your frames, you may be quite surprised how quickly this happens. Do ensure they have a constant supply of syrup.

Shook Swarm

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This is a very effective way of quickly changing all your brood frames and will result in removing all pathogens from the hive, it can however be quite stressful for the bees, so you need to ensure you have a good quantity of young bees in the colony before you carry out the shook swarm. 

The best time to do the shook swarm is late spring, you should have plenty of young bees by this point. The method is quite simple: Lift your brood box off the floor and move it to one side. Place a queen excluder on the floor then place a a new clean brood box, containing brand new frames and foundation, on top of the queen excluder. Remove 5 or 6 of the center frames to create a gap.  Now go to your original brood chamber and remove the first frame. Shake all the bees off this frame into the gap you created in your new brood box. Repeat with all the frames, look for the queen as you go. Personally I would lift the queen off the frame and place her into the new brood box, you can just shake her in if you prefer. If you didn’t see the Queen throughout the procedure do check the walls of the old brood box and make sure she is not there.  Shake any bees left on the brood box walls into your new box too.

Gently replace the 5 or 6 frames back into the gap in your new brood box, place the crownboard on top along with a feeder full of syrup.  Keep this feeder topped up until your bees have sufficient stores in their new frames.  The queen excluder on the floor will stop the queen from leaving and taking the bees with her. Once your queen is happily laying you can remove the queen excluder (2 weeks is a good bet)

The old frames you removed that have stores in them can be extracted and the wax rendered, any frames with brood in are best burnt. If you do extract stores from these frames, make sure you are confident they are stores of honey and not syrup that you may have offered in your winter preparations.

Carrying out a shook swarm on a colony with a good volume of young bees will very quickly work the new foundation in your frames, you may be quite surprised how quickly this happens. Do ensure they have a constant supply of syrup.

How do I do an Artificial Swarm?

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You have just been through your bees and have found lots of queen cells. Most of them are probably along the bottom of the frames. These will be swarm cells and if you have been doing weekly inspections they should not yet be sealed and the original queen should still be in the hive and you should still have eggs. If however you have delayed checking your bees and its been longer than 9 days since you last inspected them you may well find you have sealed queen cells and no eggs and your queen has probably gone already with half the bees from the colony. If this is the case then you are too late to perform an artificial swarm. All you can do now is remove all but 1 queen cell, we would normally leave the best one we can find, we would normally leave an unsealed one if possible. By removing the other queen cells your colony is less likely to throw off any casts, (or anymore casts as it may well have thrown some already!) Now close the hive back up and leave the bees to it. All being well the new queen will emerge and go on her mating flights and start to lay. This can take a few weeks and you do not want to disturb them during this time. I always leave mine for a good 3 weeks but I do keep an eye on the entrance. If the bees are bringing in pollen this is a good indicator that all is well. Check them in around 3 weeks time and you should see some eggs. If you don’t see eggs look for polished cells as this means the queen is imminently going to start laying.

If you have been doing weekly checks then the queen should still be there and you can perform an artificial swarm, also known as the pagden method however this is simplified version. You will need an additional hive with stand and brood frames. Feeder and syrup.

What you are aiming for is to create the situation whereby your bees think they have swarmed but without them actually swarming. The main different between what you are about to do and what actually happens when the bees swarm is that you will be separating the queen and the flying bees from the main colony and the brood and you will leave all the none flying bees in the original hive, on a new location, with one queen cell and the brood.

When bees swarm naturally the swarm will consist of bees of all ages not just the flying bees. In a swarm the bees also fill their honey stomachs with honey just before they leave, this is ensure they have food to start off their new colony. In this procedure your bees won’t do this so you will also need to feed the bees.

So, you are checking your bees and you have lots of queen cells but the queen is still there and you may or may not have eggs. Gather all the equipment you need before you start and then move the existing colony to one side but over 3 feet away. Now set up your new hive in the exact spot where you have just moved the colony from. You should already see flying bees returning to this new hive. Remove 1 brood frame from this new hive and take it with you to the colony you have moved.

Go through the colony you have moved and find the queen, she should be on a frame of brood. Take the queen and the frame with open brood and put these into the center of new hive which is located where this colony was before you moved it. Check the frame to ensure there are no queen cells on it, remove any you see. If the original colony had super with honey you can move these over to the new hive as well. If you don’t have supers with honey in them instead you will need to feed the new hive. Use a rapid feeder or something similar with syrup. All the flying bees will be returning to this hive and thus you have created an artificial swarm.

Now go back to the original colony and go through each frame of brood thoroughly and remove all but one good queen cell. It is best to find your good cell first before you destroy all the others, to help with this you could mark the top of the frame with the good cell on as you go through then you know which one has the good cell on it. Once you have left only 1 queen cell close this hive up too. Once that has been done you can leave the bees get on with it. All being well the new queen will emerge and go on her mating flights and start to lay. 3 weeks is a good measure from the time you took the nucleus. Keep an eye on the entrance to see when the bees start to bring in pollen. Bringing in pollen this is a good indicator that all is well. When you do check them, you should see eggs. If you don’t see eggs look for polished cells as this means the queen is imminently going to start laying.

In pagans method a week after you have created the artificial swarm you move the original colony to the other side of the new hive. This is so that the flying bees return and their hive is not there, they will most likely enter the closest hive which will be the new one with the old queen. The flying bees will boost this colony but also deplete the original colony, which had all the brood, of more bees. The theory of this is that this colony may throw a cast and by depleting it of bees this is less likely to happen.

You now you have 2 colonies, if you intended on increasing your numbers then you have achieved this. If however you already had a number of colonies and you really didn’t want to expand you could unite the two colonies back together. This can be done more or less at anytime in the season. To unite them remove the old queen so that your united colony will be headed by your new young queen. Use the newspaper method to unite the bees, more can be read about this on our How to Unite Two Colonies page.

Quick Update

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Thanks to those that pointed out to me about the broken links in Swarming-Management; Prevention & Control. I made an error on timings; the subjects are not yet published which is why the links are not working – rookie error!!

Nucleus Method is due to publish this Wednesday 1st March 2023

Artificial Swarm is due to publish March 6th 2023

Thanks again, hope you are enjoying our blog and that you find useful information within.

Becky and the team