Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: bill on April 27, 2005, 01:49:38 pm
-
I am looking for advice on how to deal with a super full of honey when I have no shed to take it into with bees on it. I can't take it into the house my wife is allergic and I am afraid to try to take it even into the yard with a bunch of bees on it. I was thinking of building a screen chamber with bee escapes so I could put it in there till it was free of bees then bringing the whole thing up after they lose interest. Is this dumb? If it is I would like some strategy. it is my first honey and I would like to eat some. I was thinking of just taking a frame out and replacing it w/foundation is that feasible? this hive is very strong and I dont'want to crowd them so I am going to put another super on. I have two on it now and the full one is on top and I strongly suspect the other is probably getting that way as well
thanx a lot you guys have been very helpful
-
I have no shed to take it into with bees on it. I can't take it into the house my wife is allergic....
It seems that you are afraid of bee stings? Don't seem good...but you are a beginner.
If you have a super full of honey, you should put empty super or two over the brood box and also see, is it enough space.
To get rid of bees from honey you can use exhauster or what it is in english. 2 little things fastened to plate. Bees can go in one direction but not return from holes to super. It takes 24 hours to get super empty of bees.
You should also look into brood box, how much they have space there. If there is frames full of honey, lift them to the top and give foundations into brood area. If you see queen cells there, they you learn some tricks to stop swarming and quickly.
-
If you try and extract honey in the open you will have every honeybee and wasp and hornet in the area there to help you. You will need to get into a bee tight room. Try a fume board to pull your honey. Or if you only have one hive take an empty box remove one frame at a time and shake and brush the bees off each frame. Take a towel with you and cover the bee free frames while you do this or bees will get back on them. I extract in my garage and if someone opens the garage door during extraction I find that a lot of bees are just waiting to get in.
-
There are a variety of methods for clearing a super. During a heavy flow, abandoment is popular. I only do it near dark so if it fails and robbing ensues they will all go home shortely anyway. Abandonment is to remove the supers and simply pile them up in the open and wait for the bees to return to the hives. In a dearth this will cause massive robbing and is a very bad idea. Success is all in the timing. I'm too afraid of robbing so I seldom use this method.
I usually use a triangular bee escape like Brushy Mt. sells. In order to not move the supers more than once, I sometimes put the escape on a bottom board and stack the supers on top of that. usually MOST of them will clear out overnight. I brush the rest off one frame at a time.
Some people use chemicals to drive them out of the supers. I don't want chemicals in my honey, so I'm not fond of them, but Fischer's Bee Quick is the least objectionable smell (smells like benzaldehyde to me. think marichino cherries) and, although the ingredients are not listed, is claimed to be only food grade ingredients, including essential oils. This is used on some kind of fume board and the bees don't like it and leave the supers. I've never used this method.
Some people use blowers. Blowers are like bee vacs. If they are not adjusted perfectly they can kill a lot of bees by knocking them into the ground too hard. But when the are asjusted correctly, proponents say they work very well. I've never used them.
No matter what method you use there are always stragglers.
-
Here is a bee escape like the one Michael is talking about.
(http://www.betterbee.com/images/triboard.jpg)
-
I have used 40 years this kind of things. They work well and are cheap.
There are some modifications of this. But here is principle.
Also it is important that there is no need to give smoke. Taste of smoke fix itself to the honey.
http://www.uky.edu/Agriculture/Entomology/ythfacts/4h/beekeep/fig13&14.gif
.
.