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Going to do my first hive capture tonight!

4K views 10 replies 7 participants last post by  mmmooretx 
#1 ·
Someone has a hive in a wood pile that is in a trash can (probably has a hole somewhere). This is going to be interesting for me. He did tell me they are very gentle bees. I will probably do a combination of rubber banding comb cut-outs and my BrushKill BeeVac. Wish me luck, and I am looking forward to a free hive! I have some of the plywood D. Coats NUCs with the plastic restrictors on the front entrance. I will have to see if I have a deep body available at the house, just in case! If my weak hive has not started building comb in its upper deep I may use that one. This caught me by surprise as I did not expect a hive capture this late in the year, but I will figure something out as it is too late to build/buy before tonight.... :D
 
#5 ·
Sorry Charlie B it was dark when I got there, was in a narrow spot next to their garage and did not have room to set up my tripod, or I forgot in my excitement.... Anyway the comb was on the inside lid about 6 layers of comb 6-7" across maximum, still pretty soft so when I turned it upside down to do the surgery 3 of them just fell over. I rubber banded them into 3 deep frames, but most just sat on the bottom edge. I left them in a NUC box and will pick them up tomorrow night, plus add 2 frames of plasticell to try and straighten them out. They were incredibly gentle bees and hope to get them set up to survive the winter. Oh yeah there were about 2-3 lbs. of bees and I did not spot the queen. The trash can was the large green plastic type with tears in the lid, and sticks from tree branches in the trash can. Hopefully they will stay in the NUC and not migrate back to the trash can tonight/tomorrow. I also left the lid off the trash can and the NUC entrance is level with the old trash can lid and 8" from their old entrance. I hope all goes well at tomorrows planned pickup!
 
#8 ·
Why do a capture/cutout at night? I do cutouts during the day. If you use your Bushkill with the cutout screen you can take it all home when you are finished. I did this one a few weeks ago and by the time we were all finished I don't think I left more than twenty foragers behind.

Taking home the whole can was a good idea also. That's what I do with birdhouses.

 
#9 ·
Well the night thing was mainly because I have a day job and wanted to capture as many of the hive bees as possible. However once I got there the hive was small and mainly on the lid. While cutting the comb off most of the bees were on the inverted lid and I just shook them into the NUC box. Using the BeeVac was not really needed as the other loose bees were on the sticks/limbs that in the trash can ~3/4 full. The BeeVac would not have worked well there and I did not want to pull out all of the sticks. I just left the NUC there hoping that they would settle into the NUC as their new home and pick it up the next day, closing off the entrance for transportation. Yes I am looking forward to using my BeeVac on another capture.
Thanks for the insight.
 
#10 ·
#11 ·
As an update I put the NUC near where its perm. location is going to be and left the entrance restrictor in place over night and opened it at 6AM this morning. At lunch I went home to see how they were doing and some oops management. I added two empty plastic foundation (wood frame) frames and saw they had built 3" of comb off the side of the NUC. Oh well I pushed the new frames in so the "bee space" was better, also sprayed with 1:1 HBH mix. Put a new migratory cover on with a 1qt. jar feeder in the top, and 1/3 of a Mega Bee patty on the top. I still have the opening set to the queen excluder setting and will probably leave it there for a couple of weeks until I feel they are going to stay. They were still very peaceful and calm bees. I probably could have done the whole change without a veil, suit or gloves, including no smoke. I will check them again on Sunday afternoon when I return from the deer lease. Sunday I am going to also build two new hive stands, thread is in the equipment section, and I need to plan an order for a 10 frame hive pretty quick. I would rather not migrate them in cold weather, but I want them to build up some more frames before I move them. If their old comb that is rubber banded in foundationless frames does not get built up/repaired advice on what to do here would be appreciated. I would prefer to remove the cobbled comb if it does not get repaired well.
Thanks to all for the time and support on my new feral hive.
As an after thought I have not measured the cell size to see what it is and I put in the standard plasticell foundation that is 5.5mm I think. Should I consider doing something different here? I will not be able to measure their cell size until Sunday afternoon, but I also would rather not force them into 5.5 if they are building 4.9 naturally. Thoughts/recommendations here would be appreciated.
Thanks again.

Sergey I think my feral colony is more gentle than yours :lpf:
 
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