Shook Swarming

Finally! After months of reading up we made the most of the nice weather and got stuck in with two afternoon sessions to get things prepared for the new season. My first hands on effort working with my bees and I think I'm hooked. I will admit to a degree of trepidation that having spent all this time and money getting things set up that I'd end up surrounded by bees and panicking or simply just deciding that I didn't like it.

The first task was to do the shook swarm into my new brood chamber, freshly converted back to bottom bee space.


1) Preparing the new Brood chamber to recieve the bees. What we've got here is one national brood chamber on top of a queen excluder, so it acts as a queen includer and reduces the chance that the colony might abscond as a result of the shook swarm. This will be removed once the bees have had a chance to establish their new home and give the queen somewhere to lay new brood.




2)The old hive, mid swap


3) Shaking the bees off the old frames into the new Brood chamber


4) All done, the brood chamber with an Ashforth feeder on top of the Brood chamber to give the bees some sugar syrup to encourage them to draw new comb on the foundation and make sure they've got something to eat.