Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum

BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => HONEYBEE REMOVAL => Topic started by: BeeMaster2 on June 13, 2019, 08:12:16 am

Title: What a mess.
Post by: BeeMaster2 on June 13, 2019, 08:12:16 am
Yesterday we did this cutout that turned out to bee a real disaster and a mess. We were told before starting it that the bees had been in this wall for a couple of years. We went into it expecting the wall to bee full from top to bottom. The FLIR showed the main heat signature at the bottom. We even suspected that the bees might be in the section next to this cutout. Imagine our shock at seeing the below what we found when we opened up the wall.









Apparently at some point the comb got so hot that it collapsed and fell to the bottom. There was only a small amount of scattered capped brood on one little piece of comb. No eggs and no wet brood. There was not a queen in the hive, she must have been in the collapsed comb.
Continued
Title: Re: What a mess.
Post by: BeeMaster2 on June 13, 2019, 08:37:20 am
The comb in the bottom smelled bad was almost completely slimed and was full of maggots. I scraped it into a trash bag, sealed it up and threw it away.
We did get some honey from the top comb.



I opened up this wall from under the roof side because I knew that there was a good chance it would bee raining before we finished.
Notice Judy and Meloney looking intently at the sky. A loud lightning bolt just hit almost directly over us.





The comb goes up another 10 inches above the opening this makes it very hard to remove the comb without cutting bees that are up on top of the comb. Every time I hurt a bee, her best friend has to come out and take her revenge on me. Surprisingly very few did. It also did not help having one inch long staples sticking out through the remaining wall. They were a constant threat to my hands and made it very hard to scrape the remaining wax and honey off of the wood.

By the way, this was in a large senior assisted living center. If I did not smoke these bees properly and keep them calm throughout the whole process, we would have had some very upset bees and we could have had people being stung everywhere in this complex. We had a parade of people walking by the whole time we were working.
What I am saying is do not do a cut out in an area like this until you have enough removals under your belt to know how to keep the bees calm. This is not the place for beginners to be doing cutouts. 
Jim Altmiller

Title: Re: What a mess.
Post by: BeeMaster2 on June 13, 2019, 09:01:50 am
Since this hive did not have a queen or any eggs and wet larvae, I placed a small amount of lemon grass oil on the outside entrance to my observation hive and placed the bee vac box next to and touching the wall of the entrance. Then I slowly removed the frames the bees were hanging onto in the beevac and shook them off. At one point last night there was a big ball of bees hanging onto the entrance. I took these pictures this morning.
This hive has been struggling so I?m adding these bees to it.







Jim Altmiller
Title: Re: What a mess.
Post by: jtcmedic on June 13, 2019, 11:14:12 am
Very cool
Title: Re: What a mess.
Post by: Kathyp on June 13, 2019, 12:02:53 pm
Are you sure someone didn't spray them at some point?  Looks like "Old Joe"  might have stuck the nozzle of a Raid can in there at some point and with not enough bees to maintain the hive, it collapsed.  I have gotten that confession several times when finding 1/2 dead hives and a mess...but the confession comes long after I am well into it   :cheesy:
Title: Re: What a mess.
Post by: BeeMaster2 on June 13, 2019, 02:09:42 pm
Kathy,
This hive was here for over a year per the staff. When I first checked out this job there was a nerf ⚽️ ball size of bees on the outside of this hive. They said they were doing that every hot day. I put a bee vac to them to keep them from swarming. The comb may have collapsed and then they started bearding.
Jim Altmiller
Title: Re: What a mess.
Post by: Ben Framed on June 14, 2019, 11:55:28 pm
Excellent job!!