Installing a swarm into a top bar hive

so this swarm caught in Plymouth yesterday is going into this top bar height how much place that's the plan the is that the right opening side yes okay just checking I'm gonna move that bar and you might find that a lot of them are attached to the lid stop stop right where you are I'm just gonna remove this bronchus we don't necessarily want that to be incorporated into the structure nice lot of these yeah give them well yes it's still a good few in there but that's a good start obviously what we want to make sure of this we get the Queen in there so if you gently rest maybe this corner on this bar here rotate if I said right notice okay that's the most of them oh I'm just gonna run the hand hold on second I'm just gonna run the hand along this edge here just to get these guys down now they're gonna want to they're going to want to walk up now so we need to get top bars over them very swiftly yes if I put it the right way up right under the hive then hopefully we'll get some flying these are top that's a we get sort of work from from this end to get bars close together now give them a nice dark space to move up into they'll appreciate is the feeders in there already is a yes okay spray those guys down just tap on the bar if you need to get the bees on the bar together okay yeah you put that directly under the entrance bell and fly up and find where they're supposed to be we're gonna I'll prop it up from this side oh you got it yeah okay see this is one reason why I always suggest that people leave this angle yeah because a lot of proper woodworkers as it were like to plane that yeah what yeah right now if you plane it flat it's very easy to squash peas under there but if you leave the angle not only does it drain off you know if you get liquid spilt on it but also the bees can duck when you put a when you put a top bar on like that they can easily duck out of the way yes it's actually a deliberate design feature believe it or not but the water spray really gets them off surfaces which is where I use in preference to smoke this one has got a bit of peppermint oil in it just kind of well I think it helps to mask their alarm pheromone so now we've got we've got quite a lot of bees still in the box here I mean given time they will walk into the hive but we're not at the moment hundred percent sure where the queen is Oh Ellie and they will tell us over time they'll let us know because they'll either go in or not so I think probably well it depends you can either leave it like this and just let them find their own way in yeah or we could create a gap at the top here by just moving the end follower away slightly and just dump the rest of the modern L you know they'll walk in then pretty much but I think looking at the movement going on in there they're walking up the sides they will sooner or later find their way in maybe we could improve on this ramp a little bit at the top if we can get that kind of so it it's a natural lead-in to the entrance then well with a bit of we might need to prop this up with with various entrances these are got quite a strong instinct to move upwards so having a ramp like that will help to get lost stragglers in yeah there's no sign of clustering inside the basket so I'm fairly confident we've got the Queen in the hive see these guys here with their standing with their tails in the air they're they're Fanning sent from the nazarov gland which is a little white dot on their tail and that's the signal to the other bees that this is home Queens in here get your butts in here quick in base they stationed themselves the planners stationed themselves intervals so they make sure they tell their friends what Rain Man look it's good practice to pick drone looking drones up because they can't sting you there quite distinctly different from workers you know rounded but yeah [Music] process a long little bit here by comb through your hair with your fingers because they do tend to panic if they get stuck in your hair

Channel: Phil Chandler: Barefoot Beekeeper

Views: 25,036

Keywords: bees, honeybees, beekeeping, bee keeping, natural beekeeping, biobees, phil chandler, top bar hive, swarm, installing bees

Id: aiwKLYEle8c

Length: 11min 23sec (683 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 08 2018