BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > HONEYBEE REMOVAL

Guess Where?

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FloridaGardener:
No, the subject line is not a rhetorical question.

One problem is that it's 90 degrees outside and 93 in the brood nest, so there isn't a good thermal read. 

The image of the floor upstairs shows heat in the front - radiating upward. 


The image of the sidewall (taken 7pm, 80 degrees ambient temp) seems to indicate that the heat is on the SIDE of the house, not so much in the front by the garage door. That area may be radiating heat from a long hot day.
Are the bees behind the bricks to the left of the garage door? Bees around here like being behind behind bricks for thermoregulation.


Peeling back the corner board shows at least 2 ft of wax ladder UP the wood-framed corner.


Lifting the bottom edge of the upper wood siding of the SIDE of the house brings out hive trash.


Lifting up the bottom edge of the upper wood siding above the garage door brings out bees.

Thermal image from inside the garage, looking up, shows only heat in the corner.  I punched 1/2" holes in the garage ceiling & wall... and no bees came out the drywall.


Guess where?    :shocked:

I'm afraid to bid the job for this nice lady with a bee infestation!

Seeb:
Wow - keep us posted

JurassicApiary:
Hmm, yeah, tricky one.  May be residual heat rising above the hive, which as you said, could very well bee behind the bricks.  Do you have a scope camera to insert into your 1/2" holes? 

BeeMaster2:
I also use a thermal imager. The hot spot in the corner is normal. This area is usually missed during insulation. Just look in every corner of your house on a hot day. I recommend you take images in the morning before the sun is shining on this side of the house.
I did one job, 20 feet up that I could not find a heat signature at all. It was in the corner of the roof where the builder added a fancy corner box area. I checked every where else, from the inside and out, with my FLIR and determined where they must bee.
Originally  I talked the owner to leave them bee but her propane gas man refused to deliver until they were gone.
Good luck.
Jim Altmiller

FloridaGardener:
The rest of the story...

So...the heat signature was blocked by the plywood firewall above the garage ceiling.  Possibly the extra plywood was added to cut the noise of the garage door operator from rattling the bedrooms above.

But most likely it wasn't a hot spot because there was NO BROOD.

Fireblocking had stopped them from expanding. There were 5 swarm cells on the bottom of one comb and 2 on the bottom of another.

The comb was 80% nectar/capped honey, and 20% pollen.

Didn't see the queen(s) but there was a little crevice in the back and I'm going back tomorrow with the vacuum to get the final few.

Obviously I couldn't tie all that honey into frames for the bees to stand on.  I put 10 drawn frames in a hive and flipped the colorado bee vac upside down, underneath it, to encourage them to move up.  I took a peek at dusk, they were laddering up inside. And were bearding on the top entrance and, clustered on the lid of the hive!

Hope I can bring them their queen tomorrow, definitely I'll add some brood too, I was just so tired I forgot to put it in the receiving hive.

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