# Moving brood from one hive to another



## MDS (Jan 9, 2011)

Can shake all the bees off the frame you are moving but make sure the existing hive has enough bees to care for the young. If not they could be under-attended. Foragers whould have to become nurse bees and bring in less feed for the colony. You may have to feed.

Doubt they would kill the queen and never had that happen to me yet. Make sure you don't move the queen from the donor hive and if you have to put a queen excluder under the top box of the donor hive, after you check to make sure she is not in it. Within a few hours or over night you will have nurse bees in the top box and they don't kill queens.

Move some eggs if none are in the weak hive! Sounds as if you might have a queen problem in the weak hive. This is a good test to see if they need to build a supercedure queen.

I understand if you have laying workers they might kill the queen and you have to add open brood to stop egg laying workers.

Good luck


----------



## SteveBee (Jul 15, 2010)

I've moved several frames (bars) of bees to strengthen hives lately, and no one seems to notice.


----------



## KQ6AR (May 13, 2008)

If the weak hive is queen right, move capped brood over. They will hatch out soon, & help the hive take care of brood. Then the queen can lay more.


----------



## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

The nurse bees won't cause any problem - if you are worried about it wait a few minutes between pulling it from one and placing it in the other so that most all of the foragers will go home. It's done all the time though.

Of course as Winnie the Pooh said "You never can tell with bees."


----------



## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

Okay, thanks guys. I'll move them confidently when the time is right.

Adam


----------

