Honey bee ?

Can you get honey bee's to move to a hive from a hollow tree? When is the best time to try n get them?

No, they won't willingly vacate once established. They can be forced but that is an induced panic situation with resulting chaos and lack of control.

Typically you'll have to physically relocate them by doing a cut out or trap out. It might be possible to migrate them into a box but that would be a one off site specific kind of thing and not likely possible.

If the colony can not be opened, it's possible to catch a swarm from it.

It would definitely be possible to start the bees in the tree, but moving them from a hive to a tree would be very difficult. How far is the tree from where they are right now?

I'm trying to move them to a hive, sounds like watching for them to swarm is the only way, I enjoy watching them hustle back and forth and busy gathering there winter supply.

If a guy had some hives, and wanted to catch any swarms leaving from them, would it work to simply leave some empty hives in same location? In short, if you leave empty hives sitting around, will swarms find it and move in?

Not a guarantee but yes bees are attracted to bee smelling stuff. Look up swarm trapping lots of folks do that. Basically hanging a preferred sized box at a preferred height with bee comb inside at the right time of year and fingers crossed.

I've had bees move into empty equipment many times over the years.

Can you get them to move by capturing the Queen and putting her into a hive box?

My brother and I would locate wild bee trees and go back in the spring to get the bees. We would use a hive with started comb and use a funnel over the bee tree to the hive body w/one way entry. Once all the bees were out, we would kill the queen and let the bees capture the honey. Requeen as needed.

Back in the late1960s, my uncle found a dead tree with honey bees inside. He came up with a crazy idea. We went out and cut the tree, taking about an 8 foot log from the trunk. We capped the top and bottom of it with a piece of plywood, shoved rags into the entrance. Come-a -longed it onto a trailer. Hauled it home, set it up, and secured it with 3/8” guy cables. Pulled the top plywood off, replaced with a square shim with the same dimensions as a hive body. Put a deep hive body on top, then lids.

The bees eventually worked into the hive body, queen had brood in it. We took off the hive body, set it up as a new hive. We took the saw and axe to the log, and salvaged all the comb. A lot of work, but it was interesting.

That would require opening the tree to get to her as she only leaves the colony on her own once in her lifetime for her mating flight. She will accompany a future swarm that may occur but otherwise she remains inaccessible her entire lifetime.

That is exactly how you migrate a colony into a hive. The neighbor that taught me had helped his grandfather do just that when he switched from log gums and box hives to standard equipment.

Heres a photo of a swarm moving into a swarm trap hanging on my privacy fence earlier this week. Had a frame of old brood comb and one foundationless frame. I prefer to have all 5 frames in the box but this had been hanging since last year and I forgot to fill it. So these these bees went straight into a 10 frame hive before they had a chance to build any new comb.