Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => HONEYBEE REMOVAL => Topic started by: landellapiaries on July 29, 2011, 03:19:04 pm
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I started a trap out today that needed to be done asap. The colony was in a tree at a doctors office complex, and they were afraid of patients getting stung. I figured it was kind of late to let the bees raise their own queen in my area (Upstate New York), so I am trying to do the trap out with a nuc with a few frames of established bees.
As soon as the hive entrance was closed off, bees began heading into the deep I transferred the nuc into. There was a bit of fighting right way, but didn't seem too bad. The guard bees in the deep checked out the bees from the colony I'm trapping out basically 1 by 1. I am going to give this a day or so and then check the progress. I am hoping the guard bees will settle down and allow all to enter, but if not I'm going to pull the box and put a empty deep with drawn frames and do a newspaper combine into one of my other hives.
I'll post what I'm seeing here and if it is working or not.
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I think it will work out OK, but if you decide to put a different box up, be sure to give them a frame of brood, even if it's older brood. They won't have any reason to go into an empty box.
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Checked the trap out about 0445 today. There are about 8 frames of bees in the bait hive! There were no dead bees from fighting on the platform and no signs of another entry into the trap out colony. I did not however look for the queen to make sure they did not kill her, but I need to switch out the body in another day or so and I'll find out then.
I'll bait the next hive body with a frame of mixed eggs and open/capped brood.