The tube will defeat your purpose. If you do that, you are just wasting your time. If you want to talk about trapping, pm me your phone number.
Thank you kindly for the offer iddee. I'd prefer to conduct any discussions here, for the benefit of the forum members. But if you'd rather not, no worries. :)
It's very rainy and relatively cold here = the bees aren't leaving their homes.
Forecast is for same until this Friday. :roll: That, in combination with the fact that the bees
just moved in, had me considering the "tube" as a potential solution.
I appreciate the merits of an escape cone. I think I'd use that straight away if the weather were conducive, but I don't see them venturing out and exposing themselves to the elements. Hence, I thought a weather-proof "tunnel"
might provide them the shelter and incentive to scout, forage.. hopefully move. Given that the queen pheromone won't dissipate like with an escape mesh-cone I could see them simply robbing the trap and bringing it back. But, again, brand new swarm, so they've no where to store anything yet. Perhaps that will swing the odds in my favor. If not, I suppose I can wait until the weather improves and use the escape cone.
So - I suppose the questions for this particular situation are:
- What is the effectiveness of a cone-escape + trap when it's so cold and rainy that the bees aren't out?
- Is providing a weather-proof path to the trap beneficial in adverse weather conditions? or, even though they've just moved in and surely have no comb built yet, will they likely just rob the trap at worst, ignore it at best?
Cheers,
Dane