Moving Hives Descriptive Transcript 

Summary: Paul Kelly, research and apiary manager, and David Stotesbury, research and apiary assistant, shows how to move honey bee hives. 

00:06 - 00:26
[The video opens with slow motion footage of two people moving a hive at night. The text ŇMoving HivesÓ fades in. The video transitions to a montage of seven shots showcasing honey bees and different elements of the research centre, ending with footage of a bee taking off from a yellow flower as the logo for the Honey Bee Research Centre fades in.]

00:27 - 00:59
[Cut to wide shot of Paul Kelly standing in the apiary among many beehives.]

Paul Kelly: Hi there. We're here tonight to move some beehives. Going to talk through a few different methods of doing that. One of them is moving hives [Paul uses a bee smoker to puff smoke at a nearby hive.] in a way that you can do that during daylight hours. We would close them up at night when they were all home, but we may end up needing to move them from a distant location and keep them contained so that during daylight hours they can't fly.

00:59 - 02:02
[Paul takes bee smoker and continues to puff smoke around nearby hives.]

Paul: So one way of doing that is to use a screen bottom board. This is our screen bottom board here [Camera zooms in on screen bottom board at the base of the hive.] that provides the entrance and you can see the screen in here. If we go around to the back of this colony [Paul continues to puff smoke and walks around to the opposite side of the hive. Camera zooms in on bottom board.] we can see that it's open in this area right here, [Paul kneels down to show the open bottom board.]so this gives us a good amount of ventilation. We just saw a wax moth run in there. That's cool, tripping around there. So this is going to give us some ventilation and moving bees, there is a big danger of them over heating, so we need to provide lots of ventilation, so we either leave the entrances wide open, or if we close them up we make sure they have good flow through ventilation, so we are going to have air going in here and when we open up the top of the hive [Paul opens up the top of the hive showing a screen inside.] we will have air flow right up through the top.

02:03 - 02:42
[Camera zooms in on screen on top of the open hive.]

Paul: We've got a screen on a frame here, so that that air can move right through the top and give them good ventilation. We're moving a hive that's got a lot of bees in it, [Camera zooms out to show entire hive.] so they've got two empty supers and the full brood chamber here. [Paul references two empty supers at the top of the hive, and the brood chamber at the base.] We've screwed this frame down [the frame at the top of the hive] and we've strapped it in place [there is a yellow strap around the hive] to keep these supers from shifting around and the bottom board is screwed on,so everything is fixed together in a way that means if things shift apart while we are moving them bees are going to be getting out and that will be a problem.

02:44 - 03:37
Paul: So to keep the bees from flying out what we do is puff some smoke at the entrance here and we are going to shove a little bit of this foam rod into the upper entrance. [Camera zooms in on hive as Paul inserts foam rod.] Cut that off and that blocks off that upper entrance and then we are going to put some foam rod, it's called backing rod, we'll put that in the entrance here and that will keep the bees from going in and out and we basically seal up the hive as far as bee access is concerned, but they will have good ventilation through the screen at the back and the screen up at the top.

03:37 - 04:46
[Cut to wide shot of Paul speaking in the apiary holding a foam rod and screen.]

Paul: So we talked about the foam rod here, this backing rod, kind of hard to get, we've got it through log home building supply manufacturers, but it's an inch and an eighth rod foam. A screen like this eight mesh screen is easy to get, any hardware store has it and it's a good substitute for that foam rod.  What you do is cut it to shape or to length and then bend it to shape, it's got a bit of a 'V' there with two flanges on it and then we just shove that in the entrance, push that in into place there. [Paul applies the screen to the bottom of the hive.] It closes off the entrance but gives them ventilation. Even without a screen bottom board, if you have that and a screen up at the top that would be adequate ventilation, but the problem with these push in screens like that it's really tough to seal bees in, but that is one alternative there.

04:47 - 05:42
[Camera pans over to show Paul talking.]

Paul: Now we are going to go back and we are going to move some hives that won't be screened in at all, we'll just load them up on the back of the truck. If we do that when it is dark and we unload them when it is dark if they need to get our of the hive and ventilate they can do that they can pile up in front of the hive, but they never overheat if they have full access to their entrance, but this is just a way of doing it if you need to move them inside a vehicle or if you need to move them where daylight hours are involved with that move. If you are moving them inside a vehicle be very cautious of how you do that and make sure you have a smoker with you, make sure you have all your beekeeping equipment and make sure the hive is secured in a way that it can't come apart and it can't move around in your vehicle.OK, we'll load up the truck in a moment here.

05:43 - 06:07
[Cut to medium shot of Paul and David kneeling beside a hive.]

Paul: We are going to load these beehives up on our truck. You can see they have an entrance down at the bottom, these are the double nucleus colonies that you might have seen in a video we did on "Double Nucleus Colonies." We are moving these out into a new apiary, setting up a new apiary and we've got about 25 of these nucs to move out.

06:07 - 06:59
Paul: The first thing we do is puff some smoke at the entrances and these have an entrance on either side, so I'll puff a little bit of smoke there. You can see they have a super on them and that's why we have these straps on them, these straps are called kevlock straps you can get them from Mann Lake Bee Supply, fantastic straps, but we've got that on to hold the super in place and the bottom board is screwed on, so it can't come off and everything is secure, that is really important when you are moving beehives. So we give them a little bit of smoke and then we set the smoker. Dave's going to smoke the next hive so it's ready to go when we go to pick up the hive and then I'd like to talk a little bit about the ergonomics of picking up and moving beehives.

06:59 - 08:09
Paul: They are heavy, they are awkward and we are going to do it two people on a hive, so we need to communicate as we are doing this, so we are both going the same directions. Going two different directions with a beehive doesn't work out too well take my word on that one. OK, so we are going to get a hand underneath towards the front of the hive. Dave's using his left hand, I'm using my right hand, then we are going to get a hand in the hand hold at the back of the hive and we are going to tip up. Pretty heavy. Alright so we are using our legs, not our back we'll stand up and we're going to go straight over towards the truck. Because we are holding it at the front of the hive and the back you can see how we can tip the hive. If we each had a hand underneath the bottom board we wouldn't be able to tip it like that to access the level of the truck. So we'll set that up like that, [Paul and Dave set the hive on the truck.] Dave's going to go and smoke the next beehive while I position the hive on the truck. Slide that over to the middle and then we'll get another beehive.

08:13 - 08:49
[Paul walks over to the next beehive and he and David lift it together.]

Paul: Again hand near the front, the other hand in the handle on the back so we can tip it. If you are loading a truck you want to have any hives that are higher towards the middle so that if you are tying it down or strapping it down you can secure it very well. We'll get that there and move on to the next. We'll just carry on, we smoke a few hives ahead and then pick up the hives. [Camera pans to show long line of hives on the grass.] They are good and heavy, this is great.

08:49 - 09:28
[Cut to Paul standing by the truck bed with hives on top.]

Paul: We try to put entrances towards entrances. A little different with these because they have an entrance on either side, but if we load them with entrances towards entrances, if the bees come out to ventilate they are all on one end of the box and they are not on this end and that end and all over the sides. When you are picking them up to unload them if the bees are all over the place then they are all over you too and that is obviously not desirable. So we'll just you can keep that in mind if you are loading hives that have an entrance only on one side.

[Cut to time-lapse footage of Paul and David smoking the hives and loading them on the truck.]

09:41 – 10:33
[Text fades in on black screen.]

Text on screen: 19 km away 30 minutes later on a dark and spooky night…

[Video cuts to medium shot of David speaking at the new hive location at night. Hives are visible in the background.]

David: Hi guys. So we finally got to our new yard and we are ready to start unloading our beehives here. So we'll just kind of go over a couple of steps to prepare to get the hives off the truck and just a couple things you can kind of do to prepare yourself and keep yourself as safe as possible. So the first thing to kind of remember is when you are unloading and that's really the bees have kind of already been picked up vibrated and moved, so that is when they are more likely going to be traveling around and looking for you, so protection is kinda more important on the latter part of the whole move, so at this point when we really get moving these we might gear up depending on how the bees are, but that is really when you want your protection.

10:33 - 11:18
David: So they are on the trucks and the first thing to do when you are starting to unload them, these bees have traveled a little bit and they are starting to wander out now that the truck has stopped, so we actually the first thing we do is start a smoker and then puff smoke down the alley ways, the corridors we've kind of created where the bees will be. On your full sized hives like Paul talked earlier you're going to have your entrances faced together so that's where you are going to want to puff your smoke, but again like you saw earlier on these double nucs they have entrances on both sides so we are just going to go along, puff smoke on all the little corridors, just getting all those bees back into their entrance and we might do that two or three times.

11:18 - 11:39
David: Now a lot of this is going to depend on the temperature you are moving these bees in, so the warmer and the more humid it is the more patient you are going to have to be with your bees and the more protection you are more likely going to have the hotter it is. So of course we decided to do this on one of the hottest nights and we'll see kind of how that goes.

11:39 - 12:01
David: The only other thing to notice is we did keep these lids on when we were moving them and that kind of forces and air gap in between the colonies, so they are 
not slammed up against each other and that is really important just for ventilation, so we don't have these bees closed in and they are allowed to kind of crawl out as need be just so they have a little bit of air.

12:01 - 12:35
David: So I think that's all the little pointers for moving them, the only last one is the truck or the car if you have that. We have it off here just so that we can talk and do our little bit of filming here, but normally when we come to a yard and we are ready to unload we actually keep the vehicle on and the reason for that is just the vibration effect of the vehicle tends to keep the bees a lot calmer, so when we actually get going we will turn the truck back on just again to kind of do everything we can to keep them calm and keep ourselves safe so then we can move them, and we'll get going at that right now.

12:36 - 13:34
[Cut to David and Paul holding a hive that is on the truck bed. Both are wearing head lamps.]

Paul: We are ready to unload here as you can see I've got a red head lamp on that gives us the ability to see. Bees can't see the red light so they won't come out after us. We don't use white light or they will be all over us so we are going to pick them up just the same way we did to load them, they've already been smoked, they are nice and calm and we are walking over into our brand new bee yard. [Paul and David carry the hive into the bee yard that is illuminated by the truck lights. They set the hive down and Paul turns to the camera.] So there they are in their new home. They will reorient, come morning they will fly out slowly reorient to the landmarks and there is an alfalfa field coming into bloom just on the other side here. So good night girls and good luck.