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GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: Help retrieving high swarms

« Last post by beesnweeds on April 21, 2025, 07:12:47 pm »

  I stuck some old brood comb to it and baited it with some LGO, but nothing doing.

Next year staple a rag or cloth around the 2x4 and paint it with wax/propolis/slumgum, skip the LGO.  Put it up before swarm season.

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GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: Help retrieving high swarms

« Last post by beesnweeds on April 21, 2025, 06:49:50 pm »

I pulled up with an attached nuc with brood comb, heaved up next to a very high swarm, to have the bees ignore it and later fly away anyway.,.

I pull up a frame of open brood touching the swarm or as close as possible.  The swarm will walk onto it.  The queen may not walk onto it the first time so you may have to pull it up two or three times depending on the size of the swarm.  You can tie the frame to the string or put it in a bucket.

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GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: A General Hive Question

« Last post by iddee on April 21, 2025, 04:01:24 pm »

Retired now, without bees, but mine always stayed open all the way across the front all year.

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GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: A General Hive Question

« Last post by Terri Yaki on April 21, 2025, 03:34:57 pm »

>I have most of my colonies on a roughly 4 inch entrance at the moment. 

Mine are never that big.  More like 2" by 3/8" all the time.

Don't they get all backed up? Just think of how much more work they could get done if they didn't spend so much time waiting in line.

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GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: A General Hive Question

« Last post by Michael Bush on April 21, 2025, 03:16:43 pm »

>I have most of my colonies on a roughly 4 inch entrance at the moment. 

Mine are never that big.  More like 2" by 3/8" all the time.

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GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: Help retrieving high swarms

« Last post by Ben Framed on April 21, 2025, 07:40:10 am »

I have went as far as  using a bow and arrow with a weighted tip i.e. with a bow fishing rig attached to an arrow, shot over an upper limb used to attach a tree climbers rope to the bow fishing string, pulled up with an attached nuc with brood comb, heaved up next to a very high swarm, to have the bees ignore it and later fly away anyway.,.

I.e. the weighted tip is necessary for the aid of gravity to pull the bow fishing line back to the ground because the tree bark on the limb will not let the arrow easily slide to the ground without that extra weight in my experience. 


If I can't reach a swarm with my bee vac rig, which consist of a 16 foot pool pole, 10 foot step ladder and my reach from it work is at least another 6 feet,  I don't bother with them anymore.
The bee vac is the way to go when retrieving high swarms in my opinion from experience:


Note: Robo described a way to use PVC sections used with a quality beevac (bee vac) that should be even better than my setup. You will find his description and explanation somewhere in the featured topic below.

Rey 3:

Have you considered a bee vac for high removals?

https://beemaster.com/forum/index.php?topic=54531.msg496015#msg496015

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GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: Help retrieving high swarms

« Last post by BeeMaster2 on April 21, 2025, 04:27:42 am »

The answer is yes, they can draw comb on nectar. Problem is as you mentioned, sitting for a week the main bulk of the 🐝 are not foraging so they are probably empty. I have worked swarms that had been in a bush for a week and they were not nice. They were stinging people 100 feet away. I had to wear jacket and gloves to get them in a beee box. That is a very large swarm. A Nuc box would not be big enough for them to move into.

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GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: A General Hive Question

« Last post by Terri Yaki on April 20, 2025, 09:15:32 pm »

I'd say it's close to 4". It's not a problem for them during the day, they're just hanging out on the porch at night.

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GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: Swarm season is here for this area.

« Last post by The15thMember on April 20, 2025, 08:18:16 pm »

It's proving to be a swarmy year for me.  I have another afterswarm up in the pine tree.  They issued pretty late, around 4:30 PM.  I typically have swarms issue around noon.

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GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: A General Hive Question

« Last post by The15thMember on April 20, 2025, 08:16:17 pm »

Do they just need their entrance widened a little bit?  Sometimes entrance congestion can cause a crowd outside waiting to get in.  How big is their entrance currently?  I have most of my colonies on a roughly 4 inch entrance at the moment.