I figured that it will take a lot of bees to build up a decent nest. Too much time
wasted in catching bees on a nice sunny day.
Off on a bit of a tangent here bP but may be worth a thought at your end
when you are keen enough to go chasing bees with a net to build numbers.
For local most recent (days ago) reasons I have had cause to set up
Ye Olde Bee Trap. What is needed as hardware is;
2 lid sized boards - "shims" as some know them - both have a 60mm
hole at center of plan view. One penetration has at least three thickness
of newsprint as a cover, the other leads into a Porter Bee Escape system.
I build my own but the method of one way routing is very flexible.
Bait is required and for that I use old drawn comb saturated with honey water.
Depending on number of bees captured you may also need more than
one viable colony to 'feed' the captured bees to. From what I read of your plight
one day one capture should fill your need for bees.
Soooo...
In the target zone...
the board of newsprint is laid down and a standard super placed on it.
The comb is then placed inside and the trap left for at least two hours.
On hot sunny days a shading method may be needed.
On inspection where it is seen there are copius numbers of bees working the
comb, and others stacked up in the air awaiting a turn, then it is time
place on the lid with bee escape. Wait another hour at least to then close the
bee escape and move the whole of the trap to your viable colony.
Both that colony and the captured bees will work the newsprint to combine
and so the captured bees will get on board in their new home.
In the situation I have I intend to do this as many times as it takes to
remove rogue foragers from my yard... it could take me some time to
scoop up better than 20K of bees ;-)
Bill
