all beekeepers need to have some skills in migrating or shifting colonies because
the need is bound to arise at some stage during your beekeeping career there are
many reasons why bees need to be moved for example if you're getting
renovations on your house you might have to shift the hive in your back yard and
a short distance you may wish to purchase a hive and you've got to go
to where you're purchasing the hive and bring it to your property say you need
that skill as you become a larger bee keeper but often you decide that you want
ship bees honey flowers or pollen flows some distance away and the methods
they use depend on how far you going to move the hive and especially
the time of the year and that is really critical
bees incubate their brood at 34 degrees Celsius and heat kills bees so
if you don't give bees enough ventilation when you shift them you'll
end up with dead hives it's also important when your ship bees any
distance that they are firmly held in place it's no good putting the hives in
the back of a box trailer and away you go by the time you get there you'll end
up with just pulp because of the bouncing of the trailer it will pop the
wax and the bees will all be smothered so we're gonna go through you know all
the different methods in this video to upgrade your skill and so you know you
know how to move bees under different circumstances the first one will be
shifting bees you know a short distance for example in your backyard
this method demonstrates moving hives a short distance for example if someone
was doing some renovations in your yard and you had to move a short distance
attended have an assistant and I had an assistant you're right
the Illawarra bee-garden Ian Phillips to help me lift the important
thing was you would have noticed
we kept our back straight we lifted with our legs so
we're not going to cause any occupational health and safety hazards
because bees can be quite heavy you'll also use a barrow with a fork
on it to shift bees a short distance like that you do it in the daytime so
it's important that you do this preferably in the daytime and you shift
about three meters so we're the hive was originally the bees can see where you
shifted the colony to if you've got a shift say 10 meters 15, 20 meters you
might have to do it over three or four moves and you can do them on consecutive
days the other trick that's used is to place some grass at the entrance of the
colony so I'm going to place some grass at the entrance of the colony now just
like that so because I've shifted the hive from
there to here there bees in here that a field
bees they were depositing pollen or nectar when I picked it up and we
shifted it those moves will come out and they'll be distracted by the grass and
they'll re orientate if you don't do that they'll tend to go back straight to
where they come from now over a period of a few hours the bees that were three
meters away will see the hive has only gone 3 meters and they will fly back to
the original hive by using grass you're not blocking the entrance up or anything
like that so there's plenty of air in the colony the bees will become disturbed
for a few hours until they were you orientate so that's why it's not to go
out where you've shifted it from for a few hours until they re orientate they
quickly re orientate and they settle down and they'll orientate to the new spot
the next day if you want to go further you know shift in another short distance
you can't pick it up and take it 20 metres the bees need to be able to see
the colony within reasonably close distance as to where they were before
because they've got such precise GPS is to find
their colony keep the hive strapped I'm so it might come to pieces and smoke the
entrance when you pick it up and you'll have no problem it's a simple thing to
do but you need to be conscious that it's there very heavy so you often need
to get help or a barrow to shift at that short distance so I've now moved three
meters back from where I shifted the hive to within and you'll notice there's
a lot of bees you know flying here though the bees are out in the field
when the hive was here when they left they've come back to where they belong
there's no hive so that's what all these bees flying around me are now and as I
mentioned before you need to wait a while don't go out and do what I'm doing
but within a couple of hours they will have seen the new hive which was the
original hive not that far away and they'll go and orientate to that hive
the ones that come out because the grass was in the front or re-orientate to that
spot straight away and won't come back to here they're usually not that
aggressive because they're coming back with food which is a good sign
that keeps them dose all right in this case you'll notice as a hive in the
background that's not always the case and that one y'all need to be moved to
some renovations so the bees that were going into the hive where I'm standing
yeah some are drifting into that hive and bees will drift into hives when they
come back with food and be readily accepted so there won't be any fighting
going on is that high behind me wasn't there they'd all go back to where the
new location of the original hive was so times you know can be an advantage to
move hives with the entrance close and that's always done it not but we're
doing this in the daytime I'll show you what to do so your weight will all be
stopped flying at night you go to the hive and you block the entrance in
commercial beekeepers have proper shutters quite often but you can use
some chux and your hive tool to block the entrance up so no bees
can escape it's important no buoys get out of the colony the other very
important thing to do is to make sure that the frames are what we call chopped
if they're not chopped it leaves a lot of problems because as you move along
the road on a vehicle the frames bounce and shake about and
you will find that when you get there you'll have a lot of dead bees and
possibly the coin so by placing a chalk in the colony like that that holds the
frames in place when you can only shift please shut when the weather is cold and
there's not a lot of bees in the colony so on this colony there's not a lot of
bees so we're able to move it shut in car whether so I've tucked the bottom
frames I'm going to chalk the frames in the super as well with just chocks of
timber and you need several different sizes if you've got any number of hives
because those frames can be spaced it slightly differently so I've chocked
these frames so they can't possibly move around the common mistake is not to chock
the frames get there and you've lost your queen you then place the lid on
the hive and do up strap now this is all done at night so there's nobody's flying
and that's important because you don't want to leave any bees behind because
you're shifting this hive you know some distance away in winter or car weather
and when there's not many bees in the hive yeah it's important to strap tight
so the boxes and nothing you know moves so you need to put a fair bit of effort
into pulling that back shut nighttime that's when you do it we're now going to
load this onto a vehicle now if it's put in the back of the station wagon or
something like that the suspension is probably okay but if you put in a
heavier vehicle or one-tonner or a box trailer and you don't tie it down you're
in serious trouble because of the bouncing so will now load this box onto
the vehicle so the easiest way to do it is to push it sideways like that
you want to make sure there's no Redback spiders or snakes or anything under the
box because that can happen you then put your hand under the cleat and lift it
and keep your back fairly straight and lift with your knees so you walk over
then and then you can push it across on the vehicle like that sides up yeah it's
very important to tie the hive on so it doesn't bounce around when you get to
the site you can take the hive straight off and put it on the ground at night
let's make the entrance and open the hives up but this can only be done in
cold weather and when there's not a lot of bees in all the boxes if you want to
shift them shut you can sometimes add an empty box to
the top which gives it more air space it's very easy you know to smother hives
because I'll overheat once they're locked in they run around you're doing
it at night so they've collected nectar during the day so there's a lot of loose
nectar that they haven't ripened in the colony because they ripen honey
overnight some beekeepers move bees closed entrance early of a
morning after the bees have ripening the nectar so this method involves using
what we call a screen so it's a rectangular frame with wire gauze on it
not the plastic type because bees will chew through plastic mesh so has to be
wire mesh to the use this method we're going to shut the bees in at night so
shut the bees in at night and we're gonna put a screen on it so you can see
this hives reasonably strong just get the rest of the bees out of the lead in
there so then I put the screen on the hive like so and it completely seals off
the top you need a big area of screen otherwise bees will still smother and
die if you use a small amount of mesh for example if I put mesh in the
entrance the bees don't breathe through their mouths paths they breathe through
the side of their body they'd rush to the entrance to try and get out
completely block the air off by having this please run around so there's always
air getting in you need something like this to put on the top when you put the
m-lok high faster on or you can put the lead you know back somewhere like that
so they're getting in here under here and you can shift it that way but it
takes more space on a vehicle so normally you'd use something like this
put that there pick the hive up
strap it with the strap over this piece of timber so it doesn't damage the gauze
and tighten the strap as we saw in the previous part of this video I've already
chocked you know the frames so the frames can't
move about to squash any bees so something like that you can then load it
on to a vehicle that's shut in so the bees can't get out you drape it down if
it's on a vehicle with heavy Springs you know a station wagon something like that
you can put it in the back of a station wagon and away you go like that when you
get to the site smoke under the screen to chase the bees off it smoked the
entrance and let the booze out so that's here you can shift strong hives in hot
weather with a screen another method that can be used to ship booze is open
entrance probably 99% of commercial beekeepers always move hives open
entrance so when you move open entrance you don't shut the hive in you just go
to the hive say about an hour before dark you puff the entrance and he picked
the hive up and load it onto the vehicle after chocking the frame so that they're
not loose you then load it onto a vehicle the hives if there's more than
one or whatever and you leave the vehicle stop there until dark rape the
hive stand and then drive off the bees are out in the food will come back
because they got food they'll go into any hive the hives are healthy so
there's absolutely no problems and they won't smother and that's the most common
method used if you're a smaller beekeeper and you're worried about hives
smothering you can still move them open entrance in the back of a station wagon
or vehicle provided you wrap them up in some type of shade cloth commercial
beekeepers when they load hives open often cover the whole low
with shape cloth so bees can't escape so they have no problems with them
escaping on the road the critical thing is you don't park your on the street
lights at night or get fuel you have enough fuel to go the distance so this
is a method just putting them on tighten them down and going when you get to the
site you wait till the next morning that's important but waiting till the
next morning the bees are flying off the vehicle and then you just slide them on
the ground and they'll drift into the hives and all will be fine
you don't unload open entrance bees at night so this is another method where
you can move bees open so the entrance is not shut so I've loaded these much
later than afternoon the normal open entrance movie when the bees have
stopped flying I put some salt on cloth or shade cloth on the ground big enough
to wrap around the whole hive and I've tied it so it's totally be proof the
hives been strapped with an Em-lock and the frames have been chocked so they don't
move around so now once it's dark with the bees and stop flying or you just
pick this up put it in the back of a station wagon and a way I go there's
plenty of air get surrounded the bees come out of the entrance they get
entrapped in the shade cloth so there's plenty of air still going through it so
they're not going to smother so if you don't have a screen to go on the top
this is another method you can use so your bees don't smother if you've got to
go a reasonable distance in hot weather with strong hives red light yeah as
often handy bees can't see red so if you want to see in the dark a bit when
you're doing this yeah red lights an advantage like a tie light on a push
bike with a battery in or something