adding bees to a colony with the newspaper bag method

[Stromnessbees]

I still have got a few small colonies which would benefit from some extra bees and brood.

Adding frames of brood without bees can lead to chilled brood, as there might not be enough bees around to keep them warm, especially as the nights are getting colder now.

I found Dave Cushman's page about the newspaper bag method (http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/newspaperbag.html (http://website.lineone.net/%7Edave.cushman/newspaperbag.html)) and used my frame feeder as a former. Luckily a sheet of the Orcadian makes a perfect bag over it, without any cutting.

Before I give it a try: Has anybody else got experience with this method?
Any useful tips?

Cheers, Doris

[Calum]

Hi!
would not removing whole frames of brood not deprive a good colony of a large number of winter bees (they will not easily miss, and have invested in with the longevity of their current bees)? If you have a couple of small colonies why not combine them to form strong colonies with better survival chances?
Strenghtening weak colonies with flying bees could also be an alternative... But it is getting on in the year for that imho.

just a thought
bye for now
Calum

[Jimbo]

Hi Doris,

I have used the newspaper bag method for introducing a frame of bees with a new queen when re-queening into a strong hive. It was similar to the newspaper method of uniting colonies ( I used a sheet from the Herald). I agree with Calum that you might want to think about uniting this late in the year.

Jimbo

[Stromnessbees]

Hi Calum and Jimbo

So the method seems to work ok.

I have several colonies with about 5 frames of brood, and I think taking one frame from each of them might just be ok, especially if they have just a medium size area of brood.

The aim is to get the young queens through the winter, often it's in spring that a spare queen is needed and then I can unite if necessary.

I am also feeding them small amounts every other evening with my mini-Ashforth feeders to encourage them to keep breeding. Last year, despite the rather cold winter, my small colonies got through the winter fine and built up very well as I fed them again in spring.

Thanks for your comments, Doris

[HensandBees]

wow looks interesting, not seen this before but I recently made a vertical division out of newspaper when I wanted to combine 2 sets of bees into a home made nuc that does nt have a similar sized other one that can be used to unite the traditional newspaper way and this seemed to work . I pinned a sheet of paper to a division board so they had to work out a way round the edges and stopped them from going over the top with more newspaper

[Alvearium]

I remember this 'newspaper bag' method of queen introduction on her own frame was the subject of a write up by Neil Anderson of Lenzie many years ago in the Scottish Beekeeper. Have not found it yet but will try to. He attributed this to his wife.
Alvearium

[Jimbo]

Hi Alvearium,

I was told about the newspaper bag method of queen introduction by David Brown, one of our older and experienced beekeepers from Helensburgh. I wonder how many more useful and practical tips the older more experienced beekeepers on the forum would like to share.

Jimbo

[Stromnessbees]

I finally got round to download a whole lot of pictures from my camera. They'll be turning up in all sorts of threads now, so watch out.

This is one taken a few days after introducing a frame of bees and brood with the newspaper bag method. Everything looks fine, the bees are gradually removing the paper and the queen already has laid up lots of cells with eggs in there.

371


As this had been a success I had another go today:
3 nucs each got a frame of bees and brood, all from different donor-colonies. All seemed fine, but when I came back to feed them, one of them had fighting bees at the entrance:

372

There could have been a tear in the paper and the new bees must have come out before they had picked up the hive-odour.

I decided to give them a good dose of smoke through the entrance to stop them fighting. They all hurried inside and I hope that they're ok now, but will check in a few days to make sure the queen did not come to any harm.

Doris