First beehive cut out today!

Folks,

Today Kitty and I did a big beehive cut out today. I'd helped with one last year and this was Kitty's first. Kitty is also a blogger find her at Labyrinth Farm.  Kitty has posted about the cut out with lots of photos here. This hive has been inside a shed wall for about 20 years. It measured 24" x 42" and was 4 1/2" deep. We filled 2 deeps with 15  frames of bees, brood,  comb, honey and pollen. Likely 15 pounds of honey which we'll crush and strain in the future. The un capped honey we'll return to the bees. Also about 15 pounds of odd pieces of comb I'm leaving out for the bees.

You might ask did we get stung? Kitty got two and a half stings, one through the glove the other while tasting the honey without gloves, the half sting was through her pants. I saw bees sting my gloves but did not get any stings from these bees. Once home and I set up the new hive I took off my gear and my mother hive bees chased me 100 foot and I got stung in the head as a bee got stuck in my hair. Think I killed another that was going for my cheek.

Kitty took this video with my camera. I forgot to tell her not the turn the camera on the side. So grab your laptop and turn it sideways to view.

This is yours truly tearing open the wall of bees. Kitty did a great job of filming this. I had to cut each of those slats of wood to get to the comb and cut the comb around those slats to remove them. Must have been 7-8 layers of comb running up the wall 3 1/2 foot, some comb was nearly a foot wide. Wish we'd had photos of those. perhaps Kitty will post some photos on her blog as listed above and in my side bar as well as Labyrinth Farm

So we did not get many photos. The reason was the camera got covered in honey then covered in bees. My gloves and tools were all a sticky honey mess. That reminds me I have yet to taste the honey... The above photo is of about 1/3 third of the hive cut out.

So after 4 hours of being in my make shift bee suit cutting these girls out, here they are at home in my yard. I added another deep box with 3 frames of new foundation and 7 simple top bars. We'll see what they like! The box on the left is my bee vacuum box, the screen is the cover for it. I'm naming this hive Evelyn for the lady whose shed these bees were in.

Let me tell you what else happened once I emptied the remaining bees into the hive. Shortly afterwards I was on the phone looking outside I saw thousands of bees rising up into the tops of our willow trees! Then they kind of settled back down and flew all about in front (20 -25 foot out) of the hive for a good 45 minutes. I walked around the garden and bees were on all kinds of flowers. I did not see them returning with pollen, but feel like they like the place.

So on the back porch Meg was painting the top bar hive. Several times she bolted into the screened porch because bees were chasing her as she was painting the hive. What a trooper she is. The top bar hive is nearly finished, bees arriving next Saturday!

For the record, I believe our bee yard doubled if not more today in the number of bees. We added one hive and now have 4 hives. Betting some of these new bees will swarm and perhaps I can add them to the double nuk along side the Kimberly hive. We still have two unnamed hives in the yard.

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.