Populating Your Hive

There are three ways to populate your backyard or rooftop hive with bees. New colonies should be introduced in early Spring when temperatures are warmer and plants begin to bloom.

Packaged Bees

The most common way for new beekeepers to start a hive is to purchase a package of bees. Packages are produced by commercial beekeepers who split their strong hives into boxes that contain a caged queen and usually 3 pounds of bees. This package can be collected or sent via the mail in early Spring. When purchasing a package you can most often count on ending up with a healthy, productive colony.

Installing Bees from a Package

To install a package, first remove the caged queen and hang her cage between two top bars. The screened part of the cage must be facing outwards so that the worker bees can feed and care for her. Make sure the cage is secure and will not fall into the hive. Next, contain the colony between the rst 4-5 frames. If you do not limit the bee’s space it is likely they will abscond, or leave, finding their new home hard to heat and inhospitable.

The bees will also need to be fed with sugar syrup. Put 1 part hot water and 1 part sugar in a jar and shake until the sugar dissolves. You can use the jar as a feeder by poking small holes in the lid and turning it over on a stand (the bees must be able to access the drip) or you can use a store bought feeder. A general rule is to continue feeding your bees sugar syrup until they stop eating it. Refill your feeder as needed. You can also feed your bees with a pollen patty.

After the queen has been hanging in the hive for three days, you can return to release her. Remove the plug at the bottom of the cage using your hive tool while the opening is facing inside the hive. Watch your queen walk into the hive to insure she is inside and looks healthy.

Swarms

Catching a swarm is a great experience for all beekeepers, and is easy to do. Each spring, honeybee colonies that survive the winter with strong numbers tend to swarm. This is how bee colonies reproduce. A third of the colony shoots out of the front of the hive, and take to the sky in search of a new home. The swarm will land on a branch, park bench, fence etc. and wait while scout bees look for the perfect new home. Hanging in a large mass, these home hunting bees can be captured in a box and introduced to a beekeeper’s backyard hive. Because they are already looking for a home, it is usually easy to convince them to stay.

Most of the time, swarms are a sample of the strongest colonies. For this reason, some beekeepers prefer to catch swarms, encouraging successful genetics, adapted to the local environment. The downside is swarms are a mixed bag, you don’t know what you are going to get. Swarms can carry disease and mites with them, they might also have some undesirable behaviors; prone to swarming, aggressive behaviour etc. Many of these problems can be solved by re-queening the colony, others can be more serious.

Finding a swarm

The first step to acquiring a swarm is to get on a swarm list. The majority of people who end up with swarms in their backyards, on their fences etc. are unsure what to do with them. They usually call a beekeeping association, beekeeping supply store, or online swarm removal source to ask for help. These resources will connect citizens with swarms to beekeepers wanting to populate their hive/s. After being contacted through a swarm list, the beekeeper must act quickly, arriving at the swarm location before the home-hunting bees are gone. Sometimes it can take days for a swarm to find a home, other times it only takes a few hours. It is always a good idea to ask where the swarm is located, how high up it is, and how long it has been there to make sure you have the ability to catch it.

Capturing a swarm

You will need:

• 1 x bee suit
• 1 x bee brush
• 1 x ladder (if needed)
• 1 x large cardboard box

To catch the swarm you must knock the swarm into your cardboard box. Place the box underneath the hanging bees and give the object they have landed on a good shake. If the bees have swarmed onto something like a wall or house, a gentle brush or sweep with your bee brush will do. In some cases if the object they have swarmed onto is small enough, like a tree branch, it is easiest to cut the branch into the box and take the whole thing with you. If you are successful in catching the majority of the swarm in the cardboard box, the bees will begin to send out pheromones, sticking their abdomens in the air and fanning their wings. This is a call to the rest of the colony. If you let the box sit on the ground, or near where the swarm originally hung, and wait 10-15 minutes, the majority of the swarm will join their colony in the box. If there is still a large mass of bees hanging, you may need to do an additional shake or brush into the box. It is impossible to get all of the bees in the box, and sadly some will be left behind, but the majority of bees will hopefully nd your backyard hive the perfect place to live.

Installing a Swarm

To install a swarm into your hive make a small space in-between the top bars to dump the bees. In a top bar hive make sure to close down the space using your follower board to contain 4-5 frames. If you do not limit the bee’s space it is likely they will abscond, or leave, finding their new home hard to heat and inhospitable.

After a week or two, when the bees have built comb, return to the hive and look for eggs and larvae, insuring that the queen arrived safely with your swarm.

A Nuc

A Nuc is a small colony that comes with both bees and a few frames of brood (unborn bees) and food (honey). This is a major advantage, because these things take time for bees to create and will give your new colony a large head start on the season. Using a nuc to populate your hive is expensive, but also the easiest way to introduce bees. However, it is difficult to find a nuc for top bar style hives. Most commonly they come on Langstroth frames that will not fit into a top bar hive.

Nuc’s also have the greatest first year success rate, as the bees will not abandon the brood or leave the hive. Like a package, Nuc’s are produced by commercial beekeepers so you can trust that the bees will have a desirable genetic makeup, and arrive without disease.

Installing Bees from a Nuc

To install a Nuc, simply put the populated frames into your new hive. If there are bees left over they can be knocked into the hive, or left in front of the hive to follow their colony in on their own time. Reduce the space inside of the hive using the follower board to contain the new frames of bees and an a couple empty frames.