# Warre Brood comb transplant.. my concerns



## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

I am not a Warre-hive beekeeper, but I can tell you how I would solve the "can't-find-the-queen" problem when selecting a donor frame from the strong hive. Perhaps you can figure out how to adapt it to your stacks.

Get down to the brood comb area and select a likely-looking brood comb (or combs). Shake or brush all the nurse bees off of them and set them aside in a spare box. Install a queen excluder on top of box where the frames came from. (For your purposes one of those inexpensive plastic ones might be good because it can be cut to the dimensions of a Warre box. Unless, of course, QEx are a normal part of Warre equipment, in which case use that one.)

Set the box with brood comb(s) in it on top of the QEx, cover and go away for 30-60 minutes. The bees will pretty quickly repopulate the brood combs with bees and because of the QEx, you can be sure they will all be workers, not the queen, and probably nurse bees attending to the brood, rather than foragers who would leave the recipient hive as they are already oriented on the strong one . After waiting for a bit, open the hive again, remove the selected comb - now covered with nurse bees - and install it in the weak hive and then return to strong one and put everything back in place, adding another comb to replace the donated one and you're done.

Because you say the combs are all stuck together, I think I might do this in two stages: first go in and get the housekeeping done (and maybe make a tentative ID of which frame(s) are candidates for donation, then go back a day or so later to do the actual swap. 

Hope this is helpful.

It would be worthwhile to identify why the one hive is struggling and what can be done to correct that. You can't just keep adding brood if there are other issues.
Enj.


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## grantsbees (May 9, 2016)

Enj,

I really appreciate that detailed suggestion. And it sounds like a solid approach. Unfortunately it requires extra boxes and a queen excluder that I don't have. This translates into $$ extra expenses.

For the cost involved (because I buy expensive cedar boxes :shhhh, I'm more likely to spend that money on a new package next year.

If there was a solution that didn't require me buying extra equipment in a short time frame, that would be more ideal for me.

But again, I do appreciate your response.


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

I would not worry about transferring the queen You will probably destroy one of the frames of comb getting the first frame out. If the strong one can spare two so much the better. When you get a frame of capped brood, the closer to emerging the better. sweep all the bees off and give it to the weak hive. 
This will give the hive nurse bees to cover the brood and allow the queen to lay more. 

However I would be asking myself why this hive is so weak. when the other is doing well. there is often an underlying problem or has been one. coule have been a queenless problem that the hive has now resolved. or could be something else that is continuing. if the latter be the case, then it needs to be resolved before doing too much.


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## grantsbees (May 9, 2016)

Tenbears,

The strong hive can definitely afford to part with 2 frames.

My suspicion with the weak hive is that the package foragers were too old to begin with, dying off early so the resources were not coming in as fast as they needed to for a proper population growth. Once I realized there was a real problem, I started re-feeding 1:1 about a week ago. Maybe that encouraged all the laying of eggs I saw yesterday. I'm planning on throwing a pollen patty in there today.

Do you think 2 frames of capped brood will be ok without the bees to cover them? Granted it's been high 80s to 90 this week, so I dont think they'll chill.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Can you improvise the equipment? Bang together a temp box from plywood and order up (or borrow) a cheap plastic QEx,. I think they cost less than $5.

A temp box (or a spare one) will be a very useful adjunct to your beekeeping in general. I always keep eon at hand so i can pull a frame and set it aside in a dark, contained space while I work on something else. Sometimes it's the frame where I find the queen - "whew she's safe in the box, now I can dig in with more confidence" and sometimes I pull frames that I want to move around to another position in another box. I think it's really useful to actually have a spare base, some extra boxes, and a couple of plastic political signs on hand whenever you go into a stack. That way you can reverse stack the boxes (keeps the bees quiet during a manipulation, inspection) or move frames around, or even make an emergency split. 

Even if you use high-quality permanent stuff for your colonies, I'd recommend getting some lesser stuff just to have on hand for bee-work days. I couldn't manage with out my ragtag assortment of temp stuff. 

Enj.


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## grantsbees (May 9, 2016)

If I can just bring over the capped brood and not have to worry about bringing bees over with the comb, that would be a simpler solution. I just would want to make sure they would make it without the bee coverage.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

It's a warm week, so likely they'll be fine w/o transferred nurse bees. If not you can try again. the bees in the weak hive will recognize that the brood needs care and do it.

Enj.


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## odfrank (May 13, 2002)

IMHO I would not steal from a good hive to help a very poor hive. It is a mess and hassle with strong Warre hives. You might kill the queen n the good hive. Let the nature take its course and start up again next year if it fails.
Consider adding a foundationless 8 frame all medium Langstroth hive with a quilt box and move into the 21st century. Then you can manipulate the hive and find the queens easily.


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## grantsbees (May 9, 2016)

odfrank said:


> IMHO I would not steal from a good hive to help a very poor hive. It is a mess and hassle with strong Warre hives. You might kill the queen n the good hive. Let the nature take its course and start up again next year if it fails.


That's where my head is at right now. I'm thinking keep up the syrup and patties and hope for the best


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## johnsof (Oct 14, 2014)

Now you know why I have started running frames in my Warres, the top bars and fixed comb make monkeying around in the hive just too too too much work for me. I can pull each and every frame out of a box, take a look, stick it in an empty box, move the frame arrangement around, and still have the wonderful advantage of the 35 lb. fully loaded box and (it seems) better wintering success.
It shouldn't be that big of a deal to whip up a box or two; I just today made a dozen of them in a few hours using basically only a table saw, a drill, and a hammer and a box of nails and bottle of glue. OK, I used a compound miter saw to cut the pieces to length but I could have used the table saw for that also if I needed to.
Keep in mind I'm pretty far north but my experience is that if I only have two boxes going into winter then I'll be feeding by the beginning of the New Year. It's not that big of a deal to do it but if I have three fully loaded boxes going into winter I won't have to worry about feeding until at least the end of March if not later. If your hive is that weak now you need to do something to build it up pretty darn quick or it's not going to make it. If the population does start to recover you'd better feed 2:1 once it starts tailing off.
Did you check for mites in the weak hive? What about EFB? That's another reason why the fixed comb is a pain in the ***, it's just so hard to look for things like that.


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## grantsbees (May 9, 2016)

johnsof,

I totally understand your point of view. The langstroth system has made beekeeping very convenient for the beekeepers. And in many cases, being so modular, can save weak colonies. What I love about the Warre methods is that it lets the bees decide how they want the hive to work. It's just my own preference.

I consider myself fortunate to have a very strong hive. The bees are doing something right without my interference. All I did was feed them some syrup in early May, nadired a box in June... and the rest was all them. If it survives the winter and the other doesn't, perhaps I can catch a spring swarm from the strong one.

As far as the weak hive and EFB/AFB there was no sign of those. I did not do a roll/wash for mites because of the size of the population. However, upon inspection there were no immediately visible sign of mites. There was not a single mite on the sticky board either.


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## BernhardHeuvel (Mar 13, 2013)

odfrank said:


> IMHO I would not steal from a good hive to help a very poor hive.


I second that. 

Strengthen the strong, get rid of the weak.


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