Bee Extraction question

[Kurt]

Hi Folks, I am going to someone's house tomorrow to get a bunch of honey bees out of a part of thier house. Not sure how big the hive is yet. Been there for 3 years apparently. I am trying to figure out some logistics of where I am going to put these bees. I have one empty hive with all new undrawn frames in it. I cannot imagine they will survive the winter starting from scratch like that. I am in Michigan and it's now september. I have one very week hive that could use a bunch of bees. Is it possible for me to just haul the weak hive to this guys house and put the bees I extract in there? Queen and all? Not sure what kind of bees they are but the weak hive does at least have some brood ((very little) and honey in it. I believe the queen may have died when the farmer next door sprayed his soy beans as there was alot of dead bees outside this hive after he did that. The hive I am extracting has comb drawn from the rafters of a very tight space. Not sure how much I am going to be able to salvage getting it out without destroying it.

Main question is if I can dump a bunch of feral bees into a weak hive and will they all get along?

Thanks for any insight.
Kurt

[JsHoney]

Most likely not because of the different pheromones.  What you can do is put them in your empty hive let them be for about a week. Then place a piece of newspaper with small hole poke in it(use a small nail), on you weak hive and then place the new hive on top. In about a two or three days the bees will chew through the newspaper and the two hive be one. Before you put the hive gather make sure only one hive has a queen. This trick also work to combine two weak hives.

[Kurt]

I am assuming that if I put paper between them there is no way for the top hive bees to get out without chewing thru the paper right? So they'll be 3 days with no exit if I understand you correctly?

Thanks,
Kurt

[JsHoney]

It 2 or 3 day is not going to hurt if there no food just drop a feeder on top or take few frame of with honey on them and place the in with them. last time I combined two hive they use the inner cover as n entrance.

[sc-bee]

>I believe the queen may have died when the farmer next door sprayed his soy beans as there was alot of dead bees outside this hive after he did that.

Check to make sure the weak hive is queenless. If both have a queen, I'm sure you already know :-D, but don't forget to get rid of the undesired queen before you combine.

Lots of post on forum about combining hives. Do a search to get more details.

[Chick]

I've had the bees chew through the paper in 12 hours, and that was without a hole poked in it.

[JP]

Kurt, you need to find out if the weak hive has a queen or not. One doesn't always get the queen 100% of the time on a cut out. You could wind up with two queenless hives, so you need a back up plan. Perhaps someone in your area or nearby can supply you with a queen.

You don't need to haul your weak hive over to the house. Do the removal, then look at combining if you wind up with one queenright colony.

You can do the combine immediately if only one of the two colonies are queenless. Cut a few small slits in the newspaper, they will chew through fine, but keep an eye on them and make sure there is proper ventilation.

Spray the newspaper with sugar water.


...JP

[Kathyp]

kurt, i don't know if you have done many removals?  there is a whole section on honeybee removal on  here.  

i am not a fan of leaving the top hive with no ventilation when i combine.  if you are not sure you got the queen and worried about them leaving, at least give them a screened bit on the top of the hive.  i have an old window screen that i use.  it's held down with bricks and the top cover over it for rain/wind protection.  it only takes a couple of days at the most for the hives to combine and you can take the screen off.

chances are, if you have gotten good bits of brood, they won't leave anyway.  be careful about the honey.  the smell of that will cause a robbing mess.  i usually put a tarp about 100 ft from my hives and dump my scrap comb from the cut out on it.  whatever is there, the bees will clean up and not (hopefully) be attacking each others hives.

another thing to consider for the future:  if your primary goal in doing cutouts is to save the hives, you may have to set an end date to when you will  do them.  i am still getting calls, but i have to tell people that i will not be doing any more until spring.  i know my odds of saving the hives at this time of the year are slim.  i refer them to another who will do it for the money, or tell them to call me in the spring.

take pics!!  good luck  :-D

[Kurt]

I appreciate all the help. I managed to get the hive out of the house. I ended up taking an empty hive there with me and I also modified my wifes steam cleaner and turned it into a bee vac that saved my tons of time and work amazingly well. In the end I got about 6 or 7lbs. of bees w/queen, and a pile of brood comb and about 25lbs of honey. The roof of this house had a small confined area the bees were using and inside was a huge hive. The combs were 9 veins that were 10" deep and about 4 feet long. They had been in there about 4 years I think the guy said. Anyway, I think they are short on honey for the coming winter so I'll start feeding them and combine my weak hive into that one. I completely dismantled the weak hive 2 days ago and there is about a 1000 or so bees left, no queen, no brood and no honey in it. That hive has no prayer of making it the winter but combined with the other one they may just have a chance.

Thanks for all the help and suggestions. I learned a ton on this little venture.

Kurt

[Kathyp]

i hope you took pictures!!   :-D

[Kurt]

Here are a few. I was up 18' on a ladder and my hands were always full so it made it a little tough. Not to mention it's difficult to handle a camera with honey covered gloves too.  :-P

http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/6034/p9030001.jpg
http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/4187/p9030002.jpg
http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/8934/p9030006.jpg
http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/6622/p9030017.jpg
http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/6341/p9030009.jpg

[Kathyp]

nice old hive.  glad you got the queen.  looks like an awkward space if it went back very far!

thanks for sharing.

[JP]

Its always great to get a queen, that one could have easily gone deeper on you into the void space. They've been there some time, I can see wax moth cocoons. There most likely was a swarm at some point that moved out or even a few. Who knows, this could have been a new colony utilizing comb from another colony. Sometimes you never really know the entire story. Great job!


...JP