Tree trunk hive moved to new home

[BeeMaster2]

I talked to a friend on the phone last night and he said that he received a call about a hive in a tree that had been cut down and need to be removed. He didn't have time to do it so he gave me the number. My neighbor, Jim and I went to check it out last night and ended up bringing 3 sections of the tree that had the bees. We were told that the tree trimmers tried to burn out the hive so we probably lost a major percentage of the hive. We did find melted wax and burned sections that we left behind, just took the wax.


Here are the stumps in the truck on Sunday morning, we left them in the truck over night. The one next to the tailgate had wax and a little bit of honey but no bees so we did not use it.

We put a board on the bee stand and stacked the 2 sections that had all of the bees on top. We left the screen on the bottom of the first stump but completely removed the rest.

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We placed a piece of wood and foam because the log was cut from 2 different directions and was not flat and tightened down the screws until it was level.



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Then we placed the medium box with drawn comb on top of the board.

and added t screws in opposite corners to lock it in place.

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Had to try picking up the bees by hand. Yea I had to use the girly gloves. :-D



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Jim is trying out picking up the bees for the first time.
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Just had to try doing this bare handed after seeing Schwaee do it. Sorry if I miss spelled your name. Found that when I picked up the bees with my bare hand, most of them would fly before I got back to the hive. When I used the glove they stayed on it all the way to the hive.




By wesleyaltmiller at 2011-11-27
No matter how many bees we moved by hand, more kept landing on the truck so I pulled out the bee vacuum.


By wesleyaltmiller at 2011-11-27
Dumped the bees in the vacuum box into the hive. It took a while for them to figure out that the rest of the hive was down below.


By wesleyaltmiller at 2011-11-27
If you look closely, you can see a few girls scenting to call in the rest of the hive. I did not want to close it up until they started scenting.


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By wesleyaltmiller at 2011-11-27
Three bees up close and personal.


By wesleyaltmiller at 2011-11-27
Here is one that had to be front and center.  Very gentle bees. We didn't take any stings.


By wesleyaltmiller at 2011-11-27
And here is the finished hive. It is a top entrance hive only. We will see how it works out. I am hoping the queen will start laying in the medium so that I can move to make a new hive. Maybe even do that a couple of times.

Thanks for viewing.
Jim and Jim
 :-D

[AllenF]

Is the brood and honey comb in all 3 sections?

[mikecva]

Oh come on now, at least paint the honey super to look like the stump.   :lau:

Looks good, did you see if you got the queen or are you just going to re-queen?   -Mike

[BeeMaster2]

Is the brood and honey comb in all 3 sections?

We didn't see any brood but most of the hives do not have much brood right now. All three sections did have some honey and pollen. there were three other sections that we just cleaned out the wax. We melted it down when we were done with this hive, it is still cooling. Won't know how much wax until I dump it out because it is also full of water to control the temperature.

[BeeMaster2]

Oh come on now, at least paint the honey super to look like the stump.   :lau:

Looks good, did you see if you got the queen or are you just going to re-queen?   -Mike

We did not see the Queen, I'm pretty sure she was in the section on the right in the back of the truck. a lot of bees got out over night and they all congregated on that log.