trap out

[rriley]

I have a friend who has honey bees in his house. The unsulation around the airconditioning unit piping going into his house has fallen out and the bees are making a home inside there somewhere. Is it possible to trap them out somehow? If so can anyone share how they did it and if possible send pics?

[Ski]

I assumed you already checked to see if you can get to the colony from the crawl space, a cutout is a lot faster then a trapout. A typical trapout will run about 2 months depending on the length of time a colony has been there. Here is a link to a trapout where I learned a lot.

[rriley]

I know if I do a cutout I need to find and catch the queen. Then take what comb I can get to and place in frames inside a hive body. Then do I leave the hive sitting there for a day or two?

[G3farms]

you can leave it or take it with you. With me that all depends on how far away I am from the cut out. If you do get the queen in the new hive most of the bees will settle in in a little while, they have to smell the pheremones and kind of figure things out. I just let the hive sit there while I am cleaning things up and putting them in the truck. Just watch the bees to see that they settle in, you will always leave some stragglers left behind.

Finding the queen is a big help in getting them into the hive if you don't use a vac. In some cut out it is hard to find her and sometimes you never do. Young queens like to run and hide.

Keep them questions coming, and good luck on the cut out, remember we need pics:D

I am glad you are going to try a cut out, it is intimidating for others.

G3

[terri lynn]

Young queens like to run and hide.

G3

Can't say I blame them under the circumstances! :D

[reneal]

When I do a cutout I usually try to leave the hive there at least till nightfall & come back then. If possible leaving it an extra day is good too. The idea here is that everyone will move into the box, so when you take it you get all the stragglers. However, the downside is that sometimes you find that there is a second clump of bees in another location, which might mean that while you have the brood & the nurse bees, the queen may be hiding elsewhere.

I had this experience just this week when I got a call about a big maple that someone had cut, only to discover that there was a huge hive inside after it broke open when it hit the ground. I only ended up with 5 frames of brood that was salvagable. but picked up four five gallon buckets of comb, much of it empty or crushed brood, & took it home. When I came back the next night, All, but one small clump of bees was in my box, so I vacuumed as much of the clump as I could get & combined them when I got home. I suspect that the original queen was killed in the fall, so I gave them a queen cell from another hive that was working on a supercedure with lots of extra queen cells.