Bee rescue, or bee slaughter..? Dial up warning!

[denbot]

Last edited Sun May 6, 2012, 03:50 AM - Edit history (3)

I've been out of town for a week, and have a day home so today we moved our wild hive from a stove refrigerator unit, into a Langstrom hive I had prepared a few weeks ago.

I took a quick shot of them just before the beeks (beekeepers) got there. This may be the last happy moments of the colony.

The move is called a cut out, the goal is to move wild bees, especially the queen, and brood comb (babies) in to a prepared manageable hive.

A couple of members of the BackwardsBeekeepers came over to show me the ropes, and I am so glad they did. This was a difficult cut out because the bees made their home in the middle of a compact refrigerator/stove with tubes, hoses, wires, and cooling fins everywhere. The optimum situation is a open space with comb which make an orderly cut out, with a high chance of capturing the queen because she will retreat behind comb as you cut it out, until the last piece, which helps to box her in for a near sure successful move.

As soon as we started moving the tarp covering the unit, the girls swarmed out and at us, causing us to stop and calm them with smoke.

We deployed a bee vacuum that draws the bees into a waiting hive box which cuts down on the counter attack.

The comb was located in the back (of course) of the unit, partially attached to the tarp. A huge section of comb collapsed as we moved the unit away from the wall for access. I apologize for the terrible quality of the picture, but as soon as we started this, our hands were full.

[IMG][/IMG]

There where so many nooks and crannies that we never were able to "herd" the bees in any direction. By the time this picture was taken, most of the comb had been cut out, and the unit pulled from the wall, and laid on it's side.

[IMG][/IMG]

We did our best to pull as much brood comb and tie it in to the new hive frames. The bees will stay with the comb, especially if the queen is in there somewhere.

The bee-vac sucked most of the girls in to one of my hive boxes. Some of the free bees landed on the captured bees and began to fan, which is often a behavior that the bees use to blow queen pheromones in the air to attract the other scattered bees to the queen, and hive.

The majority of the workers, and hopefully the queen have been bee-vacc'd in to one of my hive boxes, and we are about to place the bee filled hive box on top of the hive box with the cut out comb which was rubber banded into waiting frames.

[IMG][/IMG]

We finally got the girls into my waiting hive. So many were killed and injured. I did my best to capture the most possible, recover as much brood possible, but it just did not go smoothly.


They were just fine where they were, but because I wanted to be able to put them in a more manageable location and home, I may have destroyed the entire colony. I leave for a week tomorrow, and hopefully when I get back they will still be there. Even if the queen did not make it, if there is brood that is 4 days or younger they workers will make several of them queens to restart the hive. If the queen is with the stragglers that are still in the little crannies outside of the hive boxes, she will likely take the surviving workers and fly off to find another place to live.

Alley and I are so bummed that we may have harmed our girls, more then we helped. The only up side is that we recovered two buckets of honey comb which one of the beeks will extract and jar for us..

[Scuba]

1. Very interesting. Thanks for posting.

[surrealAmerican]

2. Best of luck to you and the bees

They are remarkable creatures, and may surprise you yet.

[Major Nikon]

3. Brings back fond memories

I used to recover rouge bee hives like this with my dad, except we didn't wear the bee costumes.

[denbot]

4. Did you wear hoods, and gloves?

Hardcore..

[Major Nikon]

5. Nope

This was back before the Africanized bees had moved north. We just put pieces of burlap sack in a smoker and smoked them really well before we started. I don't remember ever getting stung doing it, although I may have a time or two.

[Brother Buzz]

7. You were braver than I was

I never used any equipment to collect a fine swarm in a convenient location (shorts, t-shirt, flip flops, spray bottle and a bucket), but the few times I remove a colony from a structure involved a heap of disruption and a ton of angry bees; I wore a veil and long sleeves. Oh, overbred Italian bees can be VERY nasty and aggressive.

[Major Nikon]

8. We never ran into any that couldn't be pacified by smoke

Dad never kept aggressive bees. When we could capture a swarm, dad would requeen the hive with a non-aggressive variety of bees. The honey yield was less, but dad always figured he could just add more hives if he wanted more honey. We had 14 hives on our place at one time, which was a lot for us since we were just doing it as a hobby.

[Flaxbee]

6. Very interesting. You and Ally have kind hearts; I'd be

fretting about the bees, too and hoping they weren't too traumatized.

I hope you return to a happy thriving (rebuilding) colony!