Trap out question

[jhs494]

A swarm moved in behind a brick wall on the 5Th. of May.
The home owner calls may 18Th. for a removal.
We placed the cone on early on the 19Th. of May.

I added two frames of open brood with eggs and the attached bees into the catch box on the 21st. of May.

Fast forward to the 10Th. of June we had two queens cells emerge. The Queen that is in the catch box is small and puny. But they are attending to her as if she is the queen. No brood, no eggs, nothing.

I am not seeing any activity coming out of the cone. None. All the field bees are coming and going to the catch box.

I would like to remove the cone to let them rob it out. But the queen isn't mated and won't be getting mated from the looks of things. I would have rather had a queen laying and there be brood in the nuc before i open the cone.
I don't want to pinch her and place another frame of brood in for them to raise a new queen, I don't want to wait that long. The homeowners repairs are getting closer and closer to the trap out spot.
They have filled a five frame nuc with bees.
Really how much stores can they have from the 5th. of May until we put the cone on the 19th.?
I'm on week five right know.
Any suggestions or ideas?

[G3farms]

They had two weeks before you set up the trap out, so they could have quite the little nest of comb inside.
By now your queen should have been mated and just starting to lay, I would give her another week at least before you decide to pinch her. Did you happen to see many drones around?

I would not be too worried about the amount of stores inside, what you are wanting is for the queen to abscond from the inside of the wall, there could even be a few bees still emerging from cells at this point. Pull the cone off of the wall and watch the entrance for the next couple of days, if you see bees carrying in pollen, then they have not absconded yet and you will need to replace the cone and wait a little longer. The sooner you get the cone on the entrance after they have moved in the quicker the trap out goes. 

[jhs494]

Follow up to trap out.
On June 21st I placed a small piece of newspaper about the size of a dime on the end of the cone. I figured if there was bees still inside the wall, as they came out the would knock the paper out or even chew through it. I went back 2 days later and had a few dead bees (5) inside the cone. I think they were carried out from inside.
I pulled the paper out to let any more bees continue to come out. This was my way of letting the homeowner see that there were still bees inside the brick wall. He is getting a little impatient, even though I told him 6-8 weeks at least.
I checked the bait hive, no queen at all and no brood.( she was too puny to start with) I brought it home and replaced it with a queen right nuc, so when I can pull the cone, my bait hive has brood to keep the bees there and just rob out the brick wall.

Once I got home I added a frame of open brood to the old bait hive so they can try again to raise a good queen. I kept the nurse bees that was on the frame of brood to help them along.
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This picture was taken on May 19th. The day we installed the trap out cone.

[G3farms]

I like the newspaper idea, will have to steal it and try it.

[jhs494]

I had to come up with a quick easy way to prove that there were bees still in the wall. It worked.

My wife asked where I came up with that idea on the way home, i told her it just popped in my head. She said I made it sound like it was a proven method of telling if all the bees are out. Now it is a proven method!  :-D

[SkepWrangler]

Just a question (OK, a few questions, and slightly off-topic) about the frames of brood originally supplied to the catch box/nuc:  Were there on-board stores of pollen/bee bread in those frames at the time they were placed there?  Do you think protein availability (or lack of adequate protein) played a role in the development of that puny queen?  During that period over which we "fast forwarded," do you figure they were bringing in appropriate levels of pollen to satisfy the needs of the young bees as well as nurturing the queen cells?  Just wondering...I'm trying to think of ways to enhance the effectiveness of trap-outs.
Thanks,

[jhs494]

The transferred frames had plenty of stores to develop an emergency queen. The entire field force of the colony that is being trapped out was working bringing in pollen and nectar to the catch box.

I had to place two frames with bees in a nuc and carry them to the trap out site which is about five miles from my bee yard. I placed them into the back of my truck. Maybe they got too warm, I'm not sure. Perhaps not enough nurse bees is my guess.
I would have rather placed a queen in there and been done with it. It wasn't an option.

[jhs494]

I ended up pulling the nuc I was using as a catch box, and I brought it back to my home yard to work with it and get it queen right. I took another nuc that is queen right and doing quite well back over in the old nucs spot.
I pulled the cone off and the nuc was not interested at all, even after several days and at present we are in a dearth.
After several days of them having the oportunity to rob the wall out and no bees seemed interested we closed the wall up and brought the bees home. All done.

It really worked out well, the bees are out and the hole in the wall has corex covering the opening until the homeowner patches the hole with brick and mortar.