Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => HONEYBEE REMOVAL => Topic started by: kedgel on June 26, 2010, 12:31:16 am
-
Night before last I started a cutout of what turned out to be a HUGE hive behind a storm shutter on an upstairs window. It turns out the entire window was covered with comb--2 1/2' X 3'. I was only able to get about half of it out before I ran out of daylight. As it got dark, they stopped flying and started crawling--up my pantlegs! :shock: I got nailed about 3-4 times on each leg. Once the sting pheromone started to float about they started stinging through my sweat-soaked suit that was plastered to my skin. It was good and late before I got home and tried to hive the bees in the vac. To my chagrin, I found my inner box bottom had shifted and was no longer bee-tight. When I opened the vac, a gazillion angry-off bees poured out, covering the box. I swept and swept to get them off the sides so I could get the inner box out. By now, they had entirely lost their cheery disposition and in concert crawled up my pant legs and flew all over my suit and had a stinging party. By now, I had lost MY cheery disposition and unceremoniously wrestled the inner box out, pulled the bottom and beat it and brushed them off, killing several of them. :evil: FUN, FUN, FUN! :-x I hope the queen wasn't among the casualties! Anyhoo, I wasn't able to finish the job before tomorrow. Is 2 days too long for them to accept their hive-mates, or do I have to do the newspaper/combining maneuver?
-
You can combine the bees you removed with the ones you will remove, as they are of the same colony. I've done this numerous times with no issue.
...JP