About to make mistakes : Capturing bees

[animal]

Ok, I am not a beekeeper. I'm a carpenter with a sweet wife that doesn't want some nuisance bees to die.
So..
Bees apparently swarmed and I found a queen, some drones and a pile of bees (altogether a dustpan full) that had wandered into the cabin and died after not being able to find their way out.
A very active bee colony is located in the soffit next to the chimney and owner wants them gone. I've been doing other work to the place over the last week and it's time to deal with the bees. In the mean time, I've been throwing together "bee stuff" nights and over the weekend. Being cheap and expecting failure, my equipment is home-made or "repurposed".. yep, I'm a redneck, I guess.

Stuff I have :
- old cowboy hat with veil/cowl made of window screen(vinyl coated fiberglass)
- pair of TIG gloves
- small vented containers
- smoker ( cotton for fuel?)
- plunger type queen marking cylinder
- assorted knives, prybars, etc.
- Bee collection box (appx. 2' x 2' x 3' double - chambered, 2" hose inlet to bee side, 2" outlet to commercial shop-vac side, chambers separated 
by window screen material, Baffle on suction side to distribute airflow across screen, suction regulated by adjustable vent.
- Langstroth style 10 frame hive : 9.5" height body for brood, 5.75" height body for upper, telescoping lid, bottom board section with "porch" area and 7/8" high opening. Lid made of BC plywood, ponderosa pine frame, vinyl coated aluminum roofing. Base made of BC ply. & ponderosa pine. Shallow super "box" of southern yellow pine. All other parts of ponderosa pine. All interior surfaces coated with beeswax (baked in with heat lamps plus top coated with brush). Exterior coated with paraffin. Treated wood stand. Frames drilled and partially wired.
- Swarm trap 9.5" h, 5 langstroth frames, 2" dia. side entrance with .5" hardware cloth over entrance.
The "plan", such as it is ...
Smoke them a little, open up soffit, fascia, and wall if needed (smoke more as I need to). Try to retrieve them without the vacuum and place them in a collection box.... If they are too much of a handful ... shop-vac to the rescue.
Then, wire brood combs to frames and one or 2 honey combs to the shallow frames. Put the bees in and button up hive for transport. Let it sit overnight in new location and open the entrance the next morning.
Clean up/ close up soffit. Hang 5 frame swarm trap baited with a piece of honeycomb next to original hive entrance.
Also, If I find more than one queen ... build another hive immediately (except frames, order them off amazon, already waxed and ready)
and split the hive.

Please correct me where I am going wrong here... either with plans or equipment... stuff I'm missing... stuff i'm wasting time on ... suggestions ... i'm here to learn.

Also, is acrylic enamel ok for queen marking ?
        Cotton for smoker fuel?
        Planning to do this at dusk or a little earlier since they all seem to get back and settle down around 4:00 PM. Is this right or should I do it another time?
Thanks much.

[paus]

watch JJP the bee man on you tube

[Ben Framed]

Perhaps you have watched videos already as it sounds like you are off to a good start.

One bit of warning, be sure there are no openings in your protection gear where bees can crawl inside, because they 'will' and you don't want that. I would suggest at least purchasing a 'real' bee jacket with zipped on hood... The venerated type would be my suggestion..

Phillip

[Ben Framed]

Also, is acrylic enamel ok for queen marking ?

Yes works for me. I like paint pens for queen marking.

[Michael Bush]

I have much better luck with testors enamel pens (oil based enamel).  The Acrylic often gets removed.

[Ben Framed]

I haven't tried the oil based from my recollection. Does it take a while for the oil based to dry? If not I might switch to your type of paint.
The acrylic enamel dries pretty quick and I don't have to be concerned with releasing a queen with 'uncured to the touch' paint. I wouldn't want it to be smeared on her wings etc.  I do like the idea of the oil base being longer lasting. What is the noticeable longevity of your oil base paint on a queen? (How long does it seem to stay on as a average?)

Phillip

[Bill Murray]

testors enamel

[/b]

I agree with Michael. I also use testors enamel, but out of the jar. Being as I havnt had a queen last past 3 yrs. thats as far as I can say it lasts.

[BeeMaster2]

Animal,
Welcome to Beemaster.
I recommend that you ditch the welding gloves. All they will do is cause your bees to become aggressive. Get a box of the blue medical gloves. When you use the welding gloves, you will crush bees because you cannot feel them through the gloves. They then sting the gloves and the gloves get covered in sting pheromones. Then when you put them in the hive the bees react to the sting pheromones and become aggressive. You can also smoke your hands and go glove less.
Jim Altmiller

[animal]

Wow ! Thanks for the replies!
  The gloves thing makes sense and I'd rather not wear gloves... I was going by the look of beekeeping gloves I saw inside a package at the store... looked like a white version of TIG gloves (thin goatskin so you can feel the rod and torch) with a sleeve attached instead of a cuff... not the thick, rough stick welding gloves.
QUestion, it sounds like .. If you wear nitrile and one decides to sting, you could change gloves and get rid of the sting "smell".. If you don't wear gloves and one stings, will re-smoking your hands get rid of the sting "smell" ?
  Really glad to hear that Testor's enamel does a good job ... especially since I have a ton of that stuff in different colors already. I had discounted it and fingernail polish out of fear of poisoning them... still scared of the acetone in fingernail polish/lacquer. Ill just stay away from the fluorescent colors since they take so long to dry.
  I appreciate the bit about protection but I'm not really afraid of getting stung (have really good resistance to that sort of stuff) but I will use whatever I can scrounge up around the house and shop . ..maybe a tyvec suit ? Nomex is stiff and seems like it would turn a stinger(but all my Nomex stuff is dark blue and I'm assuming what ticks off wasps would also anger bees), welding sleeves, or if I can still fit my fat butt into my welding jacket ... dunno. The only locally available bee suit is at Tractor Supply and they want 80 bucks for it... Been stung or bit by just about everything in the woods except a cottonmouth (best time was a coral snake, got a little lightheaded for 30 minutes or so and my back pain completely disappeared for 2 weeks! ,,, made me want to go find another one!    ... If my daughter decides she wants to take up beekeeping, I'll order her a good bee suit ... but I'll scrounge stuff for me   
  I've only watched 2 videos... I tend to avoid videos for info unless someone "in the know" recommends one (seen too many on carpentry and car mechanics that had me ready to tear my hair out .. to trust them on a subject I know nothing about) When I got the hair-brained idea of "why not just vacuum 'em up?" like a cartoon or something ... googled it, watched a couple videos and it didn't seem so crazy... and why I brought it up here.
  I have read several things on some university websites, the UN website and a few others ... but ... either I was misunderstanding a lot, or some sources had incomplete info on how to do certain things and many sources contradicted each other.... So, I stopped by here looking for people who were actually "doing it"

Anyway, many thanks, I really appreciate the help.

 

[animal]

oh... and thanks for the video recommendation ... Ill watch some of JJP the bee man tonight

[Ben Framed]

The gloves thing makes sense and I'd rather not wear gloves...

I use the 9mil mechanic gloves from Harbor Freight. Some folks recommend thicker, like the dishwashing type. 9 does the job for me and I can still 'feel' what I am doing.

Phillip

[Ben Framed]

oh... and thanks for the video recommendation ... Ill watch some of JJP the bee man tonight

'JP' The Bee Man. Just one J. He is a member here but has not been active in some time.

BeeMaster2 has some good stuff posted here in the cutout section, as well as other members.

Phillip

[Michael Bush]

Fingernail polish is bad on all accounts.  Poison.  Doesn't stand out well (transparent to translucent usually).

[BeeMaster2]

Animal,
If you use a standard vacuum to suck up the 🐝, you will kill all of them. Look up bushkill vacuum here on BeeMaster. Robo makes them but he also shows how to make one. It is the best bee vacuum on the market. I made one and use it a lot. It uses bee boxes so you can put frames in it and then just put a top and bottom on it and you are done. You can also, after you cut out the comb and put it in frames, put the box of brood frames in with the bees. You then pull out the screen and the bees are back on the brood frame.
JP the Beeman uses one of Robo?s vacuums all the time.
Jim Altmiller

[animal]

On the Vac ... you guys are pro-level. I'm not even a beginner beekeeper yet.  on this project I'm on a "as close to zero as possible" budget. I ended up using a smaller shop vac than I was going to use because I didn't want to carry around the big one and because i was afraid of the maximum under-pressure it could generate. Airflow numbers were about the same with the smaller one and using 1.25" hose instead of 2". The reason for being afraid of the big one was taht the collection box was cardboard. The box still partially collapsed, but the screen wall laid in on a diagonal was backed by an aluminum lattice panel(off of an old screen door); which also reinforced the box in a way that, upon collapse,it would still be unlikely to crush bees. Mortality rate was lower than I expected (300- 500). I don't think the vac killed them so much as my clumsiness with it.
I did fail to use it well, though. After sucking them up, I left it alone to wire comb to frames and give the bees time to settle down. They were WAY more lively than I expected and as soon as I lifted the screen, about half(?) stormed out... so, might have to use it again on those displaced honey lickers on the side of the house.
Thanks again to you and Ben Framed about the blue gloves and smoke hands tips. At different times, I used either bare hands or 7mil blue nitrile gloves. the 9mil at our local store were black... gloves mostly for the annoying stickiness. I hate sticky.

[Ben Framed]

animal You might enjoy a four page discussion we had on bee vacs a couple years ago. I will post the link for you. You will find that we were treated with Robos' presence as he chimed in as well. He is the inventor of the 'World Famous' Robo Bee vac..

Phillip

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

[animal]

Rest assured I will read that thread and more .... but for this project, what I have works well enough to just add a fine mesh bag which is internally supported with wire.  or a piece of cardboard coated with honey so I can smoke them and have them run to it instead of to the honey covered goofball opening the box ? ...probably going for the bag idea .. not sticky, and pretty sure that it will work.   

[animal]

How it Went ... and going ... for anyone that's interested

Short answer, better than I expected .. maybe?
Felt like an idiot a lot so I got to laugh at myself a lot.. hopefully you'll get a laugh outta this too.

Longer answer:
1. I didn't die, so that's good as far as I'm concerned. Others may disagree.
2. Sucked up lots and lots of bees, accidentally released lots of bees.
3. Didn't fall off half the ladder but I did fall off the other half. Better than falling off a whole ladder and the whole ladder was only 8'. So that balanced out?
4. Held onto the heavy tray full of honeycomb and bees and kept it from spilling onto the ground; but the bees weren't appreciative of that, and still took their anger out on me.
5. Found out that ... Vac hoses + electrical cords + darkness + clumsiness + honey on everything = old fart accelerating @ 32ft./sec./sec.
6. Needed some tools and things that I forgot to take but had lots of tools and things that I didn't need, so I guess it balanced out too.
7. Got the queen by accidentally sucking her up (cf. #2), dunno if I still have her, but I think I do ... based on how bees are acting ...But I really don't know how bees act ... so ... I hope somebody will answer the question at the bottom of this post.
8. I think I would have needed more space than in a single brood box, but the bees helped me out there. (cf. #2)
9. It seems that friends seem to be "busy" if you ask them to help deal with bees. Of course, everyone knows are that bees are "busy"... but...Apparently, they can induce "busy-ness" at a distance ... perhaps by quantum entanglement through awareness of the bees ? .. further study needed...
10. Have Two 5 gal. buckets of honeycomb even after putting honeycomb in the new hive, baiting a swarm trap thing, and dropping a bunch ... that's a real plus for a family that eats a pint a year... but surprisingly, I have several friends that have offered to help me out there.
11. Was able to make an impromptu study of the structural integrity of honeycomb so that I could remove it more successfully ... and painting myself from head to toe in honey and angry bees using a gravity powered honeycomb.
12. Also found out that bee coated honeycomb follows the same law of physics governing jellied toast ...(that the odds of a dropped piece landing jelly side down are directly proportional to the consequences thereof)... bees corresponding to jelly, me as the carpet, and the number of angry bees to the cost of the carpet.
13. Developed a hypothesis that bees are like cats when it comes to herding them ... If you have psychotic cats and pump them up on a lot of meth. ... which caused me to wonder if using marijuana in the smoker would make the bees lethargic and worthless for an hour, and then eat all the honey ... and if this would legally qualify as a "medical use" for treating bee stings "a priori". .. then if there were any legally approved preventative uses for the stuff ... oops, thats the way my damaged brain works. My wife has put up with a lot for 38 years. anyway, sorry, back to bees.

Question : I now have a Langstroth 10 frame hive full of bees. I put a 1x2 across the entrance to contain them and later noticed that they had gotten together and moved it... After a few choice words and trying to tease the door shut without smashing them, noticed a few bees coming back, so I watched for a while and internally smoked myself with a Camel. Don't know if the smoking helped but it seemed to.
Anyway, it looked like they were leaving, scavenging honey and coming back to the hive. During the time I watched, measured as 1 cigarette, more bees went into the hive than came out ... 55 (+/- dunno) vs. 22 .. Does this mean the queen is in there ?

On the facetious side, There seem to be a LOT of drones ... can feeding them Bud light trans them to a queen?
sorry, it's a disease. Theirs, mine, or both : your choice.

[Ben Framed]

Congratulations!

Phillip

[jimineycricket]

   Sounds like you have a fine start to becoming an addict.
   Beware of questions like your first one: How do I know if I have a queen?  or How do I know when to add a super?  What strain of bee is best?  How much honey to leave in the hive?  Too many others to count!