getting bees in the woods

[Dexter's Shed]

it has long been my intention to get a few hives into our woods, in the early part of last year I bought four second hand commercial hives, consisting of a floor,brood box, 3 supers and roof, I added varroa mesh floors to the bases and left it at that, they all had frames but no wax foundation, and up until last week have been stored in one of my sheds at home, a few weeks ago my hive in the garden swarmed, I was able to catch these, so split my hive into two, and this got me geared up again to get some in our woods.

I have always tried to be less hands on with the bees, after all, they know better than us, so having watched a guy on you tube called Tim Rowe, and his design of a rose hive, this looked like it would suit us and our wood, so rather than fit full frames of wax foundation to each hive, which would be very costly, I've opted for 25mm wax starter strips in each frame,
we are going to start clearing a couple of areas tomorrow, and hopefully if I get called out to remove any swarms, these will then get taken to the woods

using the 25mm starter strip will mean that any honey we steal (next year) will be as cut comb, I have a special cutter and packaging for this, so we will be able to harvest on site at the woods, returning the frames straight away for the bees to clean up and use

[Bearwood]

I saw your posts on the Beekeeping forum. Good move to get them into the woods
I started a couple of months ago with one hive, and artificially swarmed into two....so far so good. Best of luck for what looks to be a favourable start to the season.

[Dexter's Shed]

good and bad start to the season here
my garden hive swarmed, I caught them with my old queen and made another hive, seems like I've lost new and old queen, just waiting on a couple of queen cells to see if they hatch/mate etc

have a newly hatched princess in a 6 frame nuc, and then got called out to collect a very small cast swarm, am hoping to find a virgin queen in that, to populate one of my bigger hives if need be

but worked at the woods today and found a good site to house two hives on, cleared the area and made bases up,

so just fingers crossed for a few more swarm call outs

[Dexter's Shed]

well, had a call out to a swarm today, and as I already have two hives in the back garden, thought now's the time, so straight over to our woods, hopefully this will be the start of Goose Wood cut comb


http://youtu.be/JhXOKrEZURA