# Adding a frame of brood w/ nurse bees to a weak hive?



## ralittlefield (Apr 25, 2011)

I have added frames of brood with the adhering bees with no problems. I would want to be sure that the weak hive had enough bees to cover the brood.


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## beeware10 (Jul 25, 2010)

you can add a frame of brood and bees to help another hive with no problem. just give them a couple puffs of smoke first. we do it all the time but double check that the queen is not on it. that will ruin your day.


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## kevink (Sep 30, 2010)

PARKBOY said:


> I have heard that you add the nurse bees along with the frame of brood but wanted to know what keeps the nurse bees from killing the queen in the weak hive that your adding them to? Or do you just add the brood?


did this with my nuc a few weeks back, apart from a bit of fighting, it worked out fine!

ideally though, if your going to do this, shake some icing sugar over the frames your adding and the bees in the hive/nuc so they have something to distract them and by the time they have clean themselves up, their "smell" has mixed and they just carry on as normal! 

good luck if you go ahead with it!


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## PARKBOY (Apr 30, 2010)

beeware10 said:


> you can add a frame of brood and bees to help another hive with no problem. just give them a couple puffs of smoke first. we do it all the time but double check that the queen is not on it. that will ruin your day.


Ok but what keeps the nurse bees from killing the queen or what keeps the bees in the hive your adding them to from killing the nurse bees since they have a different smell?


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## johng (Nov 24, 2009)

Nurse bees are very excepting of a queen. If there are any field bees on the frame they normally take off back to the original hive pretty quick.


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## Michael B (Feb 6, 2010)

Nurse bees have no attachment to any particular queen. In my mating yards nurse bees take care of dozens of queens in holding hives.

Just becareful you don't set the donor hive back. This time of year it is all about wintering numbers. If the receiving hive is that weak it is better to pinch the weak hives queen and do a newspaper combine.

If that is why you were asking.


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## PARKBOY (Apr 30, 2010)

I captured a small swarm with a queen I would like to try and keep. I took one frame of honey and one of emerging brood . Shook the nurse bees off the brood and added a queen excluder and empty brood box on top and put the shook off frame in the empty box hoping the nurse bees would come up and cover the brood but very very few did so I just added the frame to the swarm.


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## fish_stix (May 17, 2009)

Parkboy; the swarm probably didn't have many nurse bees to begin with. The bees will not usually fight if you just transfer frames with bees to the weak hive.When we make splits we sometimes have to take brood frames and bees from several different hives to make up the split. No fighting occurs, they get along fine.


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## PARKBOY (Apr 30, 2010)

I would have just added the frame without shaking it but I was worried that the queen may be on that frame since I couldnt find her anywhere.


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