Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => HONEYBEE REMOVAL => Topic started by: uglyfrozenfish on July 16, 2012, 11:51:13 pm
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Hey All,
Thought I would share my first cutout experience. A friend of a friend had bees living in their wall void and I agreed to remove them. After watching them for a while I was able to successfully guess where their comb was within the wall and decided with the home owner to access them externally. The interior walls were plaster and wood lathe :(. My cousin and I were the ones to do the cutout. We did the removal on friday the thirteenth and it went wonderfully. The bees were a joy to work with. Neither my cousin or I took a sting, and no bees were pinging our veils or buzzing us. In fact if I weren't a big sissy I would have done it without a suit :-D The bees had comb reaching about three and a half feet back into the floor joists void space. The only problem we had is not finding the queen. I realized that she could be anywhere in the house after I watched the bees for a while and realized there were a hundred different cracks for them to crawl through in the siding and interior walls of this old house. Needless to say after the removal I went back the second day vacumed about two-three pounds of bees that were clustered at the entrance of the wall void. (thanks to JP for showing off the leave a small piece of comb near the front of the hive trick) When I opened the catch box up I was hit with the scent of lemon grass oil :lol: Never did see her but pretty sure I got her since the bees were still joyously calm. I released them out at their new home in their very own hive. I ended up with four frames of brood and three 9x13 pans of honeycomb for my tummy :lol: :lol:
Thank you to Scott and Peg, JP, Shawee and Emil. Without your extremely informative videos I would never have tried this and it was a wonderfull experience.
I only have a few pics as our hands were full of honey and I didn't want to explain to my wife why I needed a new phone after the removal :-D
Exposing the hive:
(http://s14.postimage.org/h8s9kdvgt/photo_1.jpg) (http://postimage.org/image/h8s9kdvgt/)
Me with the vacum
(http://s8.postimage.org/6hfi67bqp/photo_2.jpg) (http://postimage.org/image/6hfi67bqp/)
Floor Joist void space with a cluster that we could not reach with the vacuum. Came back later and got them
(http://s8.postimage.org/v0hjnig4x/photo_3.jpg) (http://postimage.org/image/v0hjnig4x/)
The comb pattern. Just thought it was a cool pic of what used to be there.
(http://s11.postimage.org/fcz3831hr/photo_4.jpg) (http://postimage.org/image/fcz3831hr/)
Thanks for taking time to read!
Lee
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Awesome! I particularly like the comb pattern. Would it be possible to find out which direction the house was facing? I'm always curious about the direction that the bees lay their comb in feral hives?
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Javin, the beehive was on the north side of the house. Thsir main entrance was under the roof of a carport. The floor joists ran north and south. The people entrances to the house are on the east and west sides of the house.
Lee
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Nice job, Lee. Congratulations on your first cut out.
Ed
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Good job on the cut out.
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Congrats. Now your hooked line and sinker. You well be drolling for the next removal.
:th_thumbsupup: :cheer:
John
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Javin, the beehive was on the north side of the house. Thsir main entrance was under the roof of a carport. The floor joists ran north and south. The people entrances to the house are on the east and west sides of the house.
Lee
Did they run magnetic north and south, or "Mainly" north and south. I'm interested in the exact layout. From your description, it sounds like the hive comb may have been laid north-east to south-west. Just trying to dial in on exactly how they laid out their comb in comparison to the compass.
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You did a fine job, took care of your customer and got a new hive out of it. Thanks for documenting the event.
...JP
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Nice work
Gary
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Javin,
As I did not have a compass with me I can only say the opening was mainly north. In the comb layout pic I posted the comb closest to me is running from mainly northwest to southeast. You can see they run that way for a bit then take a big turn to the south. I hope that helps. Feel free to ask me more if you want more info.
Lee
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Javin,
As I did not have a compass with me I can only say the opening was mainly north. In the comb layout pic I posted the comb closest to me is running from mainly northwest to southeast. You can see they run that way for a bit then take a big turn to the south. I hope that helps. Feel free to ask me more if you want more info.
Lee
Yeah, and on closer inspection I can see that in some cases the cone is almost perpendicular to other pieces. So this shoots my "feral hive magnetic alignment" theory all to hell. Back to the drawing board...