Transferring from an Existing Hive

Moving your established colony into a Primal Bee hive gives them a fresh start in an environment designed around their biological needs. The thermal efficiency of your new hive means the bees can focus their energy on growth rather than temperature regulation.

We recommend starting fresh — leave old brood combs behind and let your bees draw new comb on Primal Bee foundation. Old comb often carries pests, pathogens, or pesticide residues that weaken colonies. Thanks to the hive's thermal efficiency, well-fed colonies will build new comb rapidly.

Before You Begin

What you'll need:

• Wired wax or plastic foundation in your Primal Bee nest frames
• Temporary queen cage (clip style works well, just to keep the queen safe during transfer)
• PPE (gloves, suit, etc.)
• Smoker and hive tool
• Feather and/or soft bee brush (feathers or horsehair brushes are most gentle on the bees compared to synthetic brushes)

Timing:

Spring is your friend here — when bees have access to early nectar and pollen, the queen ramps up brood production naturally. That said, you can start a colony any time the temperature stays above 50°F (10°C).

Pick your day carefully: calm, warm weather without rain or wind. Bees get cranky in bad weather, and you want them (and yourself) relaxed for this. Early morning or late afternoon works best — that's when most of your bees are home.

Step 1: Prepare Your Primal Bee Nest

Make sure your nest frames are ready with wire-embedded wax foundation or plastic foundation.

Remove at least 2 frames and the follower board from your Primal Bee nest to create an empty space for shaking the bees. This open area makes the transfer smoother and less stressful for the colony.

Step 2: Secure the Queen

Locate your queen in the old hive and cage her. Set the caged queen aside safely while you transfer the workers. This prevents her from getting lost or damaged during the shaking process. A few attendants will likely follow and cling to the queen cage — this is fine. Let them stay close to her to feed and groom her during the transfer.

Step 3: Prepare the Bees

Prepare the bees for the transfer by either dusting them with powdered sugar or giving them a light mist with light sugar water in a spray bottle. This will keep the bees from flying during the transfer as the bees will be busy cleaning each other off and it is more difficult for them to fly until they have been cleaned. Powdered sugar has the added benefit of knocking off phoretic mites that may be trying to cling to the bees.

Step 4: Transfer the Bees

Working frame by frame from your old hive, gently brush (using soft bee brush or feather) and/or shake the bees from the old combs directly into the Primal Bee nest.

The bees will naturally cluster in the space you've created. Don't worry about getting every single bee — stragglers will find their way to the new hive through sensing queen and Nasanov pheromones.

Step 5: Replace the Frames

Once you've transferred as many bees as possible from the old equipment to the Primal Bee nest box — slowly, gently, carefully begin to reinsert the Primal Bee nest frames that you had earlier removed and set aside. The bees will begin to walk up the foundation of these frames naturally, but if you push the frames in too quickly you will likely harm the bees in the process. Save one frame to release the queen onto before replacing it in the nest box.

Step 6: Release the Queen

Since you're transferring an established colony (the queen that laid these eggs), Primal Bee's thermal stability lets you release her directly — no cage needed. The bees already recognize her pheromones.

Before inserting your last frame, carefully release the queen and her attendants onto it, then gently slide it into place. Take your time here — you don't want to roll or harm her in the process.

Step 7: Hive Placement

Here's a helpful trick: move the old equipment 5-10 feet away from its original spot, then place your Primal Bee hive right where the old one was.

Why? There's a rule in beekeeping — "3 feet or 3 miles." Move something more than 3 feet away, and bees stop paying attention to it. They'll reorient to the hive at the original location instead of drifting back into the old equipment. This is exactly what you want.

Secure your hive — either strap it onto a stable hive stand, or at minimum, run a strap vertically around the entire hive (from outer lid to bottom board). Place straps on the sides where they won't block the entrance. This protects against wind and curious animals.

Step 8: Configure the Nest

Start your colony in Initial Feeding Configuration with the follower board positioned appropriately:

• Strong colonies: All 8 frames, no follower board needed
• Weak colonies: Start with 3 frames on the active side, follower board in the middle, 4 frames in storage on the other side.

Managing space is really the beekeeper's main job. Give bees too little room and they'll swarm (their natural instinct to reproduce as a colony). Give them too much space at once, and you get wax moths and small hive beetles moving in — there simply aren't enough bees to patrol a huge cavity, which pulls them away from foraging and caring for brood.

The follower board lets you control this beautifully. As you check on them (every couple weeks), watch for comb building.

Once bees are using 75-100% of the frames they have access to and brood comb is building, move the follower board one frame at a time. Keep doing this until they're using all available space.

At that point, the follower board insert can be removed from its frame to become a functional 8th working frame.

One quirk to expect: Bees can crawl over or under the follower board. You might place them on one side, come back, and find they've moved to the other. That's fine — just adjust the board to wherever they've decided to live. They know what they're doing.

If you won't check the hive for a month, consider moving the follower board two frames at a time instead of one, so they don't run out of room while you're away.

Handling Brood from Your Previous Hive

You have several options for the old brood frames:

Transfer to another standard hive colony: Move brood frames to strengthen an existing hive.

Create a nurse colony: Distance the old standard hive from your Primal Bee hive by at least 5-10 feet. Wait 15 days until most larvae transform into bees, then shake down the newborns into your new Primal Bee hive.

Move the old equipment at least 5-10 feet away from its original location. Bees returning from foraging or confused bees that emerge will reorient to the Primal Bee hive at the original footprint rather than returning to the old equipment.

Walk-away split: If there are eggs or larvae in the old brood frames, leave about one cup of nurse bees on top of the brood area. The bees may create a new queen and repopulate the old equipment for future use.

Freeze or discard: In cases of high contamination risk from Varroa mites or brood disease, freeze the old frames or discard entirely.

Post-Transfer Care

Feed immediately and regularly — think of it as their startup fuel.

Use an 80% sugar, 20% water solution (4 parts sugar to 1 part water) through your Primal Bee feeding system.

Here's the simple liquid sugar recipe: Fill a mason jar about 3/4 full with regular granulated sugar, then add hot water until it won't dissolve any more — that's your supersaturated solution.

Why hot water? Two reasons: it dissolves more sugar than cold water would, and the final solution freezes at a lower temperature (handy in colder weather). But here's the really cool part: bees can't fully digest all that sugar, so they excrete the excess as beeswax flakes from tiny slits in their abdomen. The more you feed them, the more wax they produce, and the faster they'll draw out comb for storing food and raising brood.

Other feeding options include: solid sugar (fondant or candy board), pollen patties, or high fructose corn syrup if you want to maximize wax production.

Primal Bee's thermal efficiency means less feeding compared to standard hives — bees aren't burning through stores just to stay warm. That said, adjust feeding based on your bees' needs, the season, and local forage. In winter, keep feeding until they have natural food sources available in their landscape.

Monitoring Your Transfer

Temperature is everything for inspections. Never open your hive below 55-60°F. If you absolutely must check (say, you can't sleep wondering what's happening), make it lightning-fast. Cold air and moisture rushing in forces bees to burn energy warming back up — energy they'd rather spend on building and foraging.

On decent days above 60°F, you can do proper inspections.

Aim for a quick look every 15 days or so, but this isn't about finding the queen, counting eggs, and checking every frame. Save that pressure for later.

After 15 days, you're looking for two things:

1. Fresh brood (capped brood, larvae, or eggs) — if you see any of these, close up and celebrate. Queen's doing her job.
2. Drawn comb — you want at least 2-3 frames built out before moving that follower board over.

Can't find the queen? Don't panic.

Watch the entrance instead. See bees flying in with bright yellow pollen baskets on their back legs? That's baby food. Adult bees barely eat pollen — they're bringing it in for larvae. Pollen baskets = brood = working queen.

After 30 days, peek under the outer lid and check frame coverage. If bees are building past the follower board, move it one position over to give them another frame.

Signs of Success

Your colony has successfully adapted when you observe:

• Normal foraging patterns resuming within days
• Bees drawing out new comb on the Primal Bee frames
• Queen laying eggs in the continuous brood frame system

The transfer process creates temporary disruption, which makes Primal Bee's thermal efficiency immediately beneficial. Your bees will spend less energy reestablishing their internal environment and more energy on productive activities.