Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => HONEYBEE REMOVAL => Topic started by: MangoBee on January 01, 2016, 11:11:00 pm
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Here's a couple of pictures and videos of bee removals I did a couple of days ago in the Melbourne and Orlando areas.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mi4LCzozzs[/video]
Bee removal (including a swarm and a beehive in a tree). This removal was at a residence in Winter Park, FL (suburb of Orlando). It appears that the main hive in the tree swarmed and landed on a lemon tree about 75' away.
I went to the residence and removed the swarm first. I found the queen after 3-4 minutes of gentle smoking (to move them so I could find her).
I caged the queen and rubber-banded her into a 5 frame nuc box. I then gently scooped the bees off of the lemon tree into the nuc. I set the nuc on top of a chair to approximate their old location and they oriented to the box.
Here's the queen:
(http://i1318.photobucket.com/albums/t650/123Beesdotcom/Winter%20Park%20Swarm%20Queen_zpszuezyzo9.jpg)
The bees in the tree were a difficult removal. I used a laser at about 5' and got a reading of almost 20', so they were about 25' off the ground. My extension ladder (24') wouldn't reach them.
(http://i1318.photobucket.com/albums/t650/123Beesdotcom/Winter%20Park%20Beehive%20removal%20in%20tree_zpskbehhdhk.jpg)
(http://i1318.photobucket.com/albums/t650/123Beesdotcom/Smoking%20the%20hive_zps2xyxmmrf.jpg)
So I climbed up to a limb lower than them and tied off my safety harness. I sat/stood on the top of the ladder and put a rope over the limb with the hive on it. I roped off the branch just behind the hive and sawed the limb off. I had run the rope 1x around my limb to help stop a free-fall once the hive was cut. I lowered the limb to the ground and moved the brood comb from the hive into my 10-frame box. This hive was moved into a 5 frame nuc at the bee-yard (too much empty space in the 10-frame box and I had already used the two nucs I had brought with me).
I moved a cardboard box up in the tree near the old hive and the returning foragers went into it and fanned. There were quite a lot of bees on/in the box. Near dark I brought the box down and put it in front of the hive. The bees in the box marched into the wooden hive box. I then sprayed bee repellent (all natural oils) on the tree limbs/branches.
I would not have done this removal without a safety harness! All of the bees are back in our bee-yard being fed sugar syrup to strengthen them!
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Bee removal from a compost barrel in Eau Gallie, Florida (part of Melbourne, FL). The bees were entering on the top, far left of the barrel (where the horizontal and vertical sections of the barrel meet).
(http://i1318.photobucket.com/albums/t650/123Beesdotcom/20151230_094107_zpsm9o1qx1x.jpg)
(http://i1318.photobucket.com/albums/t650/123Beesdotcom/20151230_094341_zpsypbq3yl7.jpg)
-the whole left side of the barrel was built out with honey and brood comb. Nice, healthy hive.
(http://i1318.photobucket.com/albums/t650/123Beesdotcom/20151230_094348_zps5y7ikrey.jpg)
(http://i1318.photobucket.com/albums/t650/123Beesdotcom/20151230_101106_zpsvxugdamo.jpg)
-I had to bend the comb sections in order to fit them through the door
(http://i1318.photobucket.com/albums/t650/123Beesdotcom/20151230_101717_zpswdnauhul.jpg)
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Nice removals. I am just biding my time until swarm season starts in So Cal. I had to add a 32' ladder to my arsenal as it seems I kept having swarm removals just a little too high to reach with my 24'.
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Very cool. What was the barrel used for?
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D,
I think somewhere in there he mentioned a mulch drum, for turning garbage into soil.
Jim
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Its a compost bin and the theory is to turn it daily...obviously they didn't ;-)
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The things and places bees build hives never ceases to amaze me. What fascinating creatures.
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Yep.
Buddy of mine is a homebrewer (as am i) and has a converted beer keg as his boil kettle.....he had storage issues in October and left the keggle flipped upside down on the side of his garage....Bees moved in (small late season swarm from what we can tell) and were not obvious...and he got a rude surprise when he grabbed the keggle by the bottom rail and flipped it over to drag it out on brew day.....they were really angry and by the time I got there a few hours later to try and salvage the situations they had abandoned the small amount of comb and skeedaddled...he only took 6 stings before he got inside. Could have been much much worse :-)
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Wow! Very cool!
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The hive in the tree is indeed queenless; she swarmed to the nearby citrus tree (that I also removed from the residence). I saw 4 capped emergency queen cells several days ago. I'll check back in a bit to see if there are eggs/larvae in there once she's hatched and had a couple of days in the hive before her virgin flight. We have a couple breaks of warm weather and I've seen a good amount of drones on recent removals so hopefully she'll do o.k. If not I'll most likely combine them.