# Clearing a brood box with fume board?



## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

I think that you will find that with a fume board the bees will readily move down off frames of honey but will not readily abandon frames of brood.
johno


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## homegrown (Jul 24, 2016)

I had a feeling this would be the case. Have you tried it?


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## m0dem (May 14, 2016)

I've heard that queens can be lost if they're run out of the hive with a fume board... never tried it though.


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

When I have been harvesting honey with a fume board I still remove the frames one at a time and clear off any bees with a brush. Sometimes I would come across a frame of honey with some brood on the bottom of the frame and I would realize this as soon as I saw quite a large number of bees on that particular frame and where there was honey only there would be few bees if any on that frame.
Johno


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## RAK (May 2, 2010)

Works well on hotter days. Theres a few that wont go down. Make sure to do this quickly or else the queens will be on the outside lol.


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## B&E (Dec 27, 2011)

We do it all the time. Works well. The bees will leave the brood without any problem. 

We only do this on doubles though. Not singles.


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## homegrown (Jul 24, 2016)

Good to know. I assume there is a good amount of bearding with fume board on?


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## B&E (Dec 27, 2011)

Depends entirely on how strong the hive is. It can be extreme or very little.


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## Eikel (Mar 12, 2014)

Why are you so concerned about all the bees being off the frames? Why not just locate the queen and make the splits?


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## B&E (Dec 27, 2011)

That's fine if you're only doing a few dozen, but when you're doing hundreds or thousands that's simply not practical.


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## beesohappy (Jun 3, 2009)

Did you try it Homegrown? How did it work out?


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

homegrown said:


> When making up nucs, I usually shake all the bees out of the healthy brood box and insert a queen excluder under this box back on the same colony. The next day, I go back to the same brood box, which is now full of young bees and no queen.
> 
> Instead of shaking 10 frames of bees out of every brood box before inserting the queen excluder, why not just drive them down with a fume board? Anyone tried this? Smarter not harder?


 I have found that it doesn't work as well as shaking each frame does. But if were going to split 20 or 50 hives I could see using fume boards as being more efficient, even if you ended up taking a queen or two. If you are using Queen cells, instead of caged Queens, you could always put a Queen cell in both parts after removing the brood boxes.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Eikel said:


> Why are you so concerned about all the bees being off the frames? Why not just locate the queen and make the splits?


 Too time consuming when working multiple hives. Not so much with only a small few.


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## homegrown (Jul 24, 2016)

I tried it on one yard this week, not impressed with the results. I used fishers bee quick and also mann lake honey bandit on the fume board. Maybe the old barf smelling fumigant( butyric acid) would work better?


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Did you use both on the same board?


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## homegrown (Jul 24, 2016)

Tried each spray separately on different boards.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

Do both,that's what we do. I work ahead and quickly push them down, my crew follows add shakes the rest completely out to catch the strays.


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## B&E (Dec 27, 2011)

Was it sunny?


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