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Author Topic: Trap out end question  (Read 2214 times)

Offline greenbtree

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Trap out end question
« on: June 14, 2013, 12:39:16 pm »
I have had a trap out going for a month now, and the homeowner would really like it to be done.  After the third box was removed I didn't replace it, because activity was really light and I wanted to see what accumulated.  Two days later I got a call that the cone was covered in bees and the folks were freaking a bit. It was 8:30 at night (they wanted me to come out right then) so I said I would be out late morning the next day.  Took another box, got there, and found just a handful of workers on the cone. 

But the roof was littered with little drifts of dead drones.

I'm thinking that the queen has left the building and the hive is on the verge of collapse.  Do you think it would be safe to close the wall up and call it done?  The hive is in a double brick wall with no access to other areas of the building as far as I can determine. I checked the attic where the wall terminates, and the space between the two walls is bricked up at the top.  I didn't find a single bee living or dead up there.  What do you think?

JC
"Rise again, rise again - though your heart it be broken, or life about to end.  No matter what you've lost, be it a home, a love, a friend, like the Mary Ellen Carter rise again!"

Offline iddee

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Re: Trap out end question
« Reply #1 on: June 14, 2013, 04:31:57 pm »
It takes 21 days for a worker to emerge, then another week or two before it flys. If the queen had quit laying the day you set it up, there would still be bees maturing a month later.
"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me . . . Anything can happen, child. Anything can be"

*Shel Silverstein*

Offline greenbtree

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Re: Trap out end question
« Reply #2 on: June 15, 2013, 03:31:55 am »
Yeah, of course you're right.   I need to start marking this stuff down on a calendar.

JC
"Rise again, rise again - though your heart it be broken, or life about to end.  No matter what you've lost, be it a home, a love, a friend, like the Mary Ellen Carter rise again!"

 

anything