Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => HONEYBEE REMOVAL => Topic started by: JP on July 24, 2012, 11:37:32 pm
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Emil and I did this one May 7, 2012. The chinese tallow flow had just started to kick in and the bees were finally throwing off swarms. These were newly established colonies.
...JP
JP And Emil Remove Two Hives In Harahan, Louisiana (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7zqAOAVnWA#ws)
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Emil's queen looked bigger than your queen :-D
Only kidding!!. That was quite a large colony with lots of drawn out wax for 1 week old.
You have trained Emil very well at finding the queens.
Thanks for the video and loved the music
Annette
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Emil's wearing the North Face version of JP's Under Armour!
You're storing lots of removed comb flat in that plastic tub. Do you eventually rubber band it into frames? If so, when do you do that?
-Liz
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Awesome! Thanks for taking the time to post the video.
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Enjoyed the video JP!
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Annette, I thought about adding some text saying Emil's queen did in fact look bigger but decided to just let things ride. Of course somehow I knew you would be the one to point that out anyway. :-D
Liz, most of it was honey to be fed back to the bees. When comb is this new most of it is generally unusable as it falls apart on you. We transferred what we could.
...JP
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How do you vacuum up bees that far into a crevice and still find the queen?
I have done a few removals and find that very difficult.
Good job JP and Emil.
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Saw, if I don't see her, I'll give them some time to regroup. She may have run over into the next floor section. I usually will leave a brood comb section to lure her back. If after a considerable time has passed I have no indication she is in an adjacent section along with a bunch of bees, I assume I likely vacuumed her.
If they are holed up adjacent to where the hive was located I do some exploratory research which may lead to either opening up another section or using a bee repellant to drive them out. The latter choice is of course most preferable.
...JP
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This is along Saw's questioning. I've been lucky enough (sometimes simply dumb luck) to find and cage the queen on the limited cut outs I've done. I then release her 2-3 days later when things have settled to reduce any obsconding urges. What do you do with a cut out when you accidentally vacuum up the queen? I was planning to put a queen excluder under the hive to keep her in but this is theory. I've got a hollow maple tree cut out this weekend where the trunk is at least 3' in diameter. Finding her in there may be quite challenging and I need to have a back up plan if I don't.
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Hey Drew,
You didn't ask me, but I'm highly qualified to answer this one because I may be the worsetester queen finder on the planet.
Generally you can tell by how the loose bees are responding to the vacuum box, and the outflow air exhaust from the vacuum itself. I've found if either are attracting a lot of loose bees then I've got the queen in the vacuum box.
Then I don't do anything about locking her in the hive, but I make sure to isolate the hive at least 50' from other hives, I put them in a place where they have full afternoon shade, I try to frame up 1/2 a medium box full of capped honey and pollen (which I put under the box of brood so it doesn't drip honey all over them), I give them a frame of eggs on day 3 after the removal (just in case) and most importantly right now is I make sure ants can't get to the hive. Ants will make them abscond every time.
If you should happen to need a queen, holler I've got spares and it would help me pay it forward. ;)
Don
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Don,
How'd that garage cut out go? Got any photos?
Avoid ants... more important than caging the queen from a cut out? Interesting. Busting my hump to do a cut out only to have them abscond is not high on my interest scale. I've got a good spot to put them in my back yard that offers shade from 1pm on that's we'll off the ground. Assuming something happens to the queen I was going to combine them with a strong 10 frame queenright nuc and overwinter in a double deep. I'll see how they look and may give you a call for a queen if it's a huge hive with plenty of brood but no queen. I appreciate the offer. I chose not to raise any queens this year because of the drought so all of my "extras" are heading up in 10 frame nucs.
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Drew, either you use the excluder or go through and find her. After two-three days it should be safe to remove the excluder.
...JP