Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => HONEYBEE REMOVAL => Topic started by: FloridaGardener on June 16, 2020, 07:58:40 pm
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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!
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Wow - keep us posted
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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?
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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
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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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My very first cutout was very similar to this one. (Brick meeting siding); (and on the corner as pictured here by you). I had my vac that day and was fortunate to vac the hard to reach queen. The Colorado Bee Vac. Excellent vac in my opinion. If I had it to do over again, I still do not know if I would choose this vac, Colorado Vac or the Robo vac. I did not know about the Robo vac when I first started. Thanks to Schawee and his buddy JP and their videos, I have the Colorado type vac.
Until now, I have not tried the Robo vac, though I have seen others using it and I am VERY impressed. I suppose they are both tops, Colorado and Robo! Good luck on capturing the queen.
Phillip
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Florida - Is that insulation I'm seeing in your last picture? I hadn't thought about it till now, but what do you do if when you run into insulation, especially if you are vacuuming? Is there an effect on the bee's?
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@ Seeb,
Yes, I kept the 1" dia. straight fitting on the end of the vac, to aim at bees not insulation. Bees were mostly on the comb, came out to the exterior corner, or on the ceiling in the back. Remember, the bees have already chewed away the insulation to make space there. I guess they survive. That's probably some of the hive trash I saw. Maybe that's why they only live six weeks.
Insulation isn't good for people either...makes me cough, I try to keep a mask on but you can only imagine: veil, gloves, mask, safety glasses when cutting. I feel like an astronaut. I started early to help with the heat issue but County curfew for noisemaking is 7am-10pm and don't want to deal with an irate neighbor mad at the sound of a saw.
If the colony looks healthy, I typically cut the brood below the honey for frames, and put those honey trimmings in a bucket with lid, to feed back later. I use an an top eke,during a flow, chop the wax so they don't drown in honey, and pull the feed tray after 4 days to clean/check for SHB larvae.
I didn't expect so much honey but should have, due to time of year. To carry the heavy comb (because its MELTing...)...clean, shallow Sterlite tub, WAX PAPER (which I ran out of yesterday) to keep it clean, on a supporting rectangle of Luan or 1/2 foam board. This honey was capped and so clean I'm contemplating human consumption. It's in the freezer now.
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Remember, the bees have already chewed away the insulation to make space there
okay, hadn't thought about that, makes sense.
whew, I'm sweating just reading this - i've had all the experience I care to have with insulation, especially in florida heat.
This honey was capped and so clean I'm contemplating human consumption. It's in the freezer now.
So this job turned out to be a good call on your part. Very interesting - thank you for sharing your adventure