Here's a couple of pictures and videos of bee removals I did a couple of days ago in the Melbourne and Orlando areas.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mi4LCzozzs[/video]
Bee removal (including a swarm and a beehive in a tree). This removal was at a residence in Winter Park, FL (suburb of Orlando). It appears that the main hive in the tree swarmed and landed on a lemon tree about 75' away.
I went to the residence and removed the swarm first. I found the queen after 3-4 minutes of gentle smoking (to move them so I could find her).
I caged the queen and rubber-banded her into a 5 frame nuc box. I then gently scooped the bees off of the lemon tree into the nuc. I set the nuc on top of a chair to approximate their old location and they oriented to the box.
Here's the queen:
The bees in the tree were a difficult removal. I used a laser at about 5' and got a reading of almost 20', so they were about 25' off the ground. My extension ladder (24') wouldn't reach them.
So I climbed up to a limb lower than them and tied off my safety harness. I sat/stood on the top of the ladder and put a rope over the limb with the hive on it. I roped off the branch just behind the hive and sawed the limb off. I had run the rope 1x around my limb to help stop a free-fall once the hive was cut. I lowered the limb to the ground and moved the brood comb from the hive into my 10-frame box. This hive was moved into a 5 frame nuc at the bee-yard (too much empty space in the 10-frame box and I had already used the two nucs I had brought with me).
I moved a cardboard box up in the tree near the old hive and the returning foragers went into it and fanned. There were quite a lot of bees on/in the box. Near dark I brought the box down and put it in front of the hive. The bees in the box marched into the wooden hive box. I then sprayed bee repellent (all natural oils) on the tree limbs/branches.
I would not have done this removal without a safety harness! All of the bees are back in our bee-yard being fed sugar syrup to strengthen them!
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Bee removal from a compost barrel in Eau Gallie, Florida (part of Melbourne, FL). The bees were entering on the top, far left of the barrel (where the horizontal and vertical sections of the barrel meet).
-the whole left side of the barrel was built out with honey and brood comb. Nice, healthy hive.
-I had to bend the comb sections in order to fit them through the door