BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > HONEYBEE REMOVAL

Darn bees just don?t read the rule books.

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BeeMaster2:
Time after time, I and others have said that in natural hives, bees build from the top down. I don?t know why they did it this way but this hive built halfway down in a wall from the sides and worked their way down. By the way the wax looked, it actually looks like they were building upwards. The wax on top is very new and uncapped and everything below it is capped and getting darker.



Here is a picture taken after we removed the stucco and the first board. It is a very old house. Notice the outside boards are one by eight yellow pine. There is a lot of termite damage but they do not like yellow pine so it is not serious damage as far as strength goes.



Here I am looking down behind the boards and you can see there is nothing but the sides holding up the comb. I thought this was pretty amazing engineering.



As soon as we started the bees started walking up the left side of the wall. I had a strong feeling that I should look for the queen and she was right in the middle of the bees heading for the top. I didn?t have a queen catcher yet because I wasn?t expecting to find a queen before we started. I had to grab her with my fingers and hold her in my hand until BobSim found a queen catcher.  Here she is.



Continued.

jtcmedic:
Very neat well done

BeeMaster2:
The below picture was taken after I removed the first piece of comb and gave it to the owner. You can see where it is attached to the sides and to the comb next to it. I had to cut the top two inches off each layer. There was sawdust in the top uncapped cells.



Here  is a picture of the brood area. Notice it is much darker comb. We rubber banded 8 medium frames of brood from this hive and we got 3 and a half gallons of honey and a lot of wax and bees.
Bob and I really enjoyed doing this cutout.



Jim Altmiller

Acebird:
If someone had to do the repair after they did the cut out do not cut into the boards in a straight line.  Cut from one side of the nail at the bottom of the board to the other side of the top nail.  This will allow you to use the cut out boards for the replacement.  It also will not throw sawdust into the comb not that the bees won't clean it out.
I am surprised that bees would take over a termite colony.

BeeMaster2:
Ace,
I agree with cutting straight down the middle of the 2x6. I pointed this out to Bob and then he did the same. If you look at the left side, you can see that is what he did.
Termites were long gone.
Jim Altmiller

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