Bee Vac and other stuff

Yesterday we planned to do our first beehive extraction (Jan and I) with hopes of setting up a new hive of feral bees in our garden, everything was set to go. I built a bee vacuum to collect the stray bees, built custom frames to install comb with the bees own brood and honey and a brand new hive to place them in.

The bees were flying into a porch built in 1921. We assumed the bee hive would be under the floor joists of the porch. The owners are getting ready to rebuild the porch and people have been getting stung, so the hive needed to go. So we cut open the porch to extract the bees and the hive was not under the porch. Instead the bees we entering a crack in the wood and going into a 24" x 24" brick column which likely has a 12" x 12" cavity in it. So getting to the hive was not possible. We set up the bee vac and collected 300 or so bees, knowing they would be exterminated.

 Here is the first prototype of my bee vac. The vacuum was one I had in my shop and never used. So I gutted the vacuum and cut it up to flatten the bottom to use in in the box I built for the vacuum. I tested the vac with some bees clinging to  my boardman feeder and it would not pull clinging bees into it, flying bees would be sucked up. So it would not work.

 So I went to the big box store and bought a bigger shop vac, this 5 hp one did the trick. You can see some of the bees it collected, only a few died after being sucked up.

To control the amount of air flow I installed this air port on the side of the vac, too much flow would kill the bees while being sucked up. You need just enough to grab them no more than that. The 1/8 inch hardware cloth top keeps them safe from the vacuum itself. The hose has a hardware cloth screen that prevents to bees from exiting the hose after your finished, this needs to be removed when collecting bees.

These are feral bees we collected. I'm guessing one is feeding the other.

 After the failed extraction we went to Jan's to inspect one of his hives. The bees had reduced a great deal and he wanted to investigate.  The honey super he installed weeks ago was nearly untouched. This frame was in the second level brood box about half the 10 frames looked like this 60% filled with honey, perhaps enough honey for them to winter over nothing for the beekeeper. No brood was found in the second level, we were worried at this point. All that extra comb is called burr comb, we cleaned it off all the frames. The tub with burr comb and drippings of honey must have had 300-400 bees in it before we finished.

 Here is an Russian bee just being born. I started singing happy birthday, Jan got a kick out of that. Perhaps the young bee there was singing in Russian bee happy birthday to it?

 Here is a wild morning glory next to potato patch. The photo below is an iron chair covered in morning glory. Meg thinks we don't need a weedeater.

This night blooming cerius opened last night. tonight we expect 8 of them to open on the porch, never had more than 2 at a time before! The aroma is heavenly.

 The pond is happy. Lots of frogs and turtles scramble when you walk down there. I had an interesting thing happen practically under my feet a few days ago. A five-lined Skink jumped out of the flower bed in front chasing a cricket. It killed it after 5-6 leaps right under my feet.