G'day,
I got home today, and found out that while I was at a beekeeping meeting yesterday, someone had tried to call me about a swarm in their mango tree. A couple of years ago the same people had called about a swarm in the same tree and by the time we had got there the bees had gone into the tree. We'd smoked and smoked into a hole fairly low down until they reswarmed and landed on some convenient bamboo. But this time the queen had her heels dug in. We must have smoked for 2 hours to try and convince them that it wasn't a nice shady well insulated beehouse. They flew aorund and just went to another entrance and into the tree again. The tree has quite a few holes I'd say. They had been there for 24 hours. I couldn't think of any other way to budge them. Would the stuff you spray to move bees along work in this case? It would be impossible to do a trapout in this tree. I talked with the woman who was afraid of bees, and she seemed reassured and happy for them to stay.
Lone