New things I have learned with cut outs.
When you have hundreds of bees buzzing around you. No one is going to let you in their house to use the restroom. I realized this about halfway through my cut out as the urge from mother nature hit me and I had all these bees hittng my veil like bullets. So instead of asking I just got I hopped in the truck and drove down to the corner store the bees couldn't keep up.
Cutting bees out of a tree sucks. It is never like you hope. They have comb in every nook and crannie there is.
What works on one cut out
will not work on the next cut out.
I am more afraid of upsetting a boat owner than I am of getting stung.
The drumming method probably doesn't work.
Welcome to Buckhead Ridge. A small town located at the north end of lake Okeechobee.
Can someone cue up the mission impossible theme.
My objective was two fold. Remove bees from a tree and remove them from a boat. The two hives less than ten feet apart.
Lets talk abut the tree. It is some type of cypress tree. Termites years ago had made a home in it and cause a huge amount of dead wood on the trunk. Eventually for whatever reason the termites were gone. Sometime later the bees moved in. The owners of the home said the bees were there when they moved in. Now the bees had a great home. A few small openings to the outside world and a nice cavity inside to set up shop. Most of the wood would flake off if you touched it. I figured this would make it pretty easy to get to the bees. Ha! When it came time to do this most of the wood that flaked off was no more than 2-3 inches of the cover wood. And while the rest of the wood surronding the opening was bad it just wasn't in a flakey stage. That means it's time for powertools! The Sawzall is a wonderful device. It can use a variety of blades and cut lots of things. It also has a tendancy to vibrate like there is no tomorrow. And if it comes in contact with the object being cut it makes a pounding sensation like a drum. Now for some strange reason even nice bees get testy when you take a sawzall to their home. Here is this tree vibrating like a bad tunning fork and wood going everywhere. I wore full protection and literally watch bees cover the sawzall and my hands holding the sawzall. They then proceeded to sting every inch of my gloves. While most of them didn't get through enough did that my hands took about 30-40 stings and are the size of grapefruits.
After two hours and one huge knot I cut as much access as I could get. The hive was sizeable and well established. However not a lot of honey. Lots of brood however. It wasn't a neat cut out . The comb was built in with all these knots of wood. Getting clean pieces was a difficult. Getting the queen forget it. I moved the comb into the hive bodies and brushed as many bees as I could. I set the hive body near the entrance. Next week I will come back with the bee vac and try to clean out the rest.
Now the boat. I hate cutting into boats. Boat owners like their boats more than their wives or kids. You cut into a boat you might as well cut off a boat owners arm. Fortunatly this gentleman was very cool about everything. I was going to try the same technique I used on the tool shed. I would cut out a section and lift it up with all the comb attached and then cut them away. Well it is nice to dream. When I did the cut I forgot to take one thing into consideration all the wires. No I didn't cut the wires. I am a little smarter than that. Not much however. The bees have made their nest and wrapped comb around every wire they could. So when I did the cover pull all I got was a piece of fiberglass coated plywood. All the comb stayed in the boat. Not only that the chamber they were in went even further in than I originally thought. Soooo, I had to cut another hole. After turning the boat into swiss cheese I was able to get to the comb. With all the wires wrapped in it made a clean cut out hard. And most of the bees moved off the comb and to the sidewall. I am not sure about the queen. What I did do was place the hive box above the second hole with the brood and honey . So the bees can easily access it. So there is no bottom board on the hive. I replaced the other cutout piece and left the bees to move themselves into the hive box. Next week I will return and encourage them to move into the hive box.
Okay I have to run to work. You can view pictures here:
http://www.brendhanhorne.com/coppermine_dir/thumbnails.php?album=76Sincerely,
Brendhan
Topic: Double Duty (Read 2418 times)