Yesterday I saw that the commercial Beek removed their bees so I made up a 2 medium box full of drawn stickie frames. We extracted honey on Tuesday. There were about 60,000 bees left behind. They probably lost about 1000 bees from each of the he 64 hives.
Here is a video showing the bees entering within minutes of putting the box down.
https://youtu.be/1A-j0PBHA4oThis morning at 5:45 I went there hoping they had moved into the box. I took an extra 5 frame nuc with 5 more stickie frames. I was planning on leaving it if there were a lot of bees left after I removed the first box. Here is what I found this morning.
I ended up placing the second box up against were the bees were the thickest. I used smoke to heard the bees left in the grass into the box. They started pouring into the box and then after several minutes they suddenly started pouring back out of the box and went right into the second box.
I picked up the Nuc and put the top on and put it in the truck. I had to pick up the 2 medium box with the front and 2 sides covered in bees. It was so heavy that I could barely pick it up high enough to get it in the truck. I paper added these bees to 4 queen right hives and I placed another stickie medium box in the back of my truck to collect the ball of bees left after I removed the 2 boxes. I just added it to a 2 medium box.
Then I started scooping up the bees hanging outside of the hives and poured Them in different boxes to help fill them up. I them just started pouring bees on the entrances of the remaining hives.