A detailed study of the transfer of ions in transfer capillaries of electrospray ion sources is presented. The laminar flow field for various capillary sizes and wall temperatures is calculated. It forms the base of ion transfer simulation of a large number of ions with space charge. This allows to study the thermodynamical conditions of the ions during transfer, which are found to vary strongly with the capillary dimensions. The dependence of mass flow and ion current on the size of the capillary is presented. Simple scaling relations are derived and tested. The method also allows to predict a transfer bias between different ion species depending on the difference in ion mobility and the composition of transferred ions.