You may have seen in a previous post that last year I helped a mate out with some hives that hadn't been opened in a couple of years. Well this year I revisited the hives and we decided to move them to my home base for two reasons. Firstly he needed to do some landscaping and hedge maintenance near the hives and it would be easier without the bees there. Secondly it would give me a chance to change out some of the tired and weathered boxes. The outside of the boxes need to be painted or coated in copper nephtenate. The inside can be painted, but I usually leave mine bare and the bees coat them in wax. These boxes were pretty tired and needed some attention.
I transferred the bees to some new boxes and redistributed some frames to give them some more space. The rule of thumb when moving hives is "no more than a meter, or more than a mile", meaning you can only move the bees a short distance (one meter max) and then you need to wait a couple of weeks for a life cycle within the hive, or else the bees will be confused and try to return to the old hive site. The other option is to move the bees offsite (more than a mile) and then, after a month, you can move them back to the new site.
So the bees are in new digs, ready to go back once the gardening is done.
Comments