USCBeeMan
09-02-2009, 09:01 PM
I have at least 3 more trapouts to work. All are in trees. Is it too late to do trapouts and have strong enough colonies to make it through the winter here in Middle TN?
I have enough hives already that I will probably have to feed through Nov to make it to spring.
D Coates
09-03-2009, 09:32 AM
I'd say yes it's too late. I've got two going right now. One out of a house (installed July 16th) the other out of a tree (installed July 19th). After a little over one month I took the cone off the house trap out and although the numbers we dramatically down the hive was still alive. I hadn't seen any activity from that trap out for over 2 weeks so I thought they had collapsed. They are greatly weakened but I now know otherwise and reinstalled the cone the next day.
I'd been told it can take 2 months for the hive to die out. I now believe it, if anything I will err on the side of 10 weeks. It will take 4 weeks to get a new queen assuming you don't have one to use. By the time the tree hive collapses, you may have had a freeze and it may be too cool for the bees to want to fly and rob out the collapsed colony. You know your weather better than I do.
If it was me I'd wait to see if they survived the winter. If they do, trap them out as soon as the chance of a last freeze passes. Their stores are low and it's before they get their numbers up. The amount of stores directly corelate to the time it takes to get them to collapse.