Moving Day For Bees

When I returned from breakfast, all the bees had moved into the top box. I set it onto a bottom board with an entrance restricter, and added a top feeder with sugar syrup to help get the bees settled and back to business.

The vacuum system is set up with bottom board, deep box, screen sleeve, and top. The top brood box holding the wire frames with comb is added to the stack. The screen in the center sleeve is pulled outward to allow the bees that were vacuumed into the lower brood box to move upward on to the frames with the brood and queen.

The small combs are placed into the pre-wired frames. You can see some brood through the 1/4 inch wire. I only needed two wire frames to hold all the comb.

Cool morning keeps the bees close.

The cooler with the paper cover at 6:00 AM the next morning. I tool a sharpen pencil to punch a row of holes in the paper across the top and bottom when it was unloaded the night before.

It is 9:00 PM, and we are looking at an older Styrofoam chest cooler. A new swarm of honey bees have chosen this as their new home. They use a crack between the cooler and the wall at the top right corner as the entrance. The old tobacco basket on the left side was removed to gain access. A sheet of brown craft paper that was cut from a roll was slid up from the bottom between the cooler and the wall. I was taped in place for the trip to the bee yard.