I would be interested

[SlickMick]

I have a trap out going that has been in place for just over 2 weeks.

Instead of providing a box and comb with eggs (simply because I dont wish to weaken my hives at this time(start of spring)) I have been vacuuming what bees are left outside the comb each evening. Tonight as in the last few evenings I have about a softball size cluster wanting to go home. How long should it be before I start to see a significant reduction in the number of bees waiting to get in in the evening or is there something else I should be doing.

Mick

PS This is my first trap out

[SlickMick]

The colony is now no colony at all  :-D

Nothing coming out and nothing to vacuum at night

Mick

[Meadlover]

Mick,

so how many nights/trips did it take you to get them all?
a full 23 days/trips?
If that is the case then trap-outs seem like a lot of time and effort!

ML

[SlickMick]

Because I didn't want to put a lure hive at the trapout I had to do it the long and hard way. In the initial stages there were trips there every night to vax the bees trapped outside the hive. With a lure hive I would expect that once they were interested in that and using it I would not have had any further trips there until it was time to expose the colony to robbing to remove the honey and then to remobe the lure hive and seal up its entry hole.

Because I did it the way I did, most of the work was done in the early stages and then towards the end a visit once or twice a week

I am not particularly interested in doing trapouts but it was a great learning exercise

Mick

[David LaFerney]

Based on my one trap out it would take some time.  Set up could be fairly involved depending on where the hive entrance is.  Then once you start the trap out you have to keep an eye on it to make sure they haven't made another entrance.  If it's a big hive you will have to change or add boxes at some point.  If you are baiting with eggs you will have to make sure they make a viable queen if the process goes on for more than a month, and do something about it if they don't.  Then when it's finished you have to tear down and remove the hive stand/scaffold and hive.

So, if you are going to do it as a service for pay, it really shouldn't be very cheap.  At best it will probably need to be several trips.   I don't think it's worth doing just for "free" bees.  It is worth doing just for the experience once or twice - to me.  If I get confident in my ability to complete the job effectively I will probably offer it as a service since I'm a contractor anyway.  In the future I will probably fumigate the cavity with sulfer (or something like that) when I believe that the hive has been robbed out.  So add that to the list of expenses.

If you are doing removals as a service though the fact that trap outs are non destructive reduces the total cost for the customer - maybe by thousands of dollars.  In a lot of cases I doubt if you can really guarantee complete success.