Bees in tubes

[Oxankle]

Looking for information last night I came accros a discussion of keeping packages of pollinator honeybees in paper tubes. They are packaged in these tubes, fed, shipped and housed in the tubes for the duration of their service, then extirminated. They can be kept in cold rooms between crops if there is more than one crop to be pollinated. The tube becomes their hive, they have no other.

I tried to find something on the design and manufacture of these tubes but could not in the time I had.

Do any of you know anything about this? If is is as successful in Australia as reported it will soon be here. Such a practice would certainly change a beekeeper's life.
Ox

[Michael Bush]

http://www.seanet.com/~entomologic/e...ogic_home.html
That would be either mason or orchard bees. The leaf cutters are usually in boards with holes drilled in them.

[Scot Mc Pherson]

YOu don't need to exterminate them. Also you can make hives by bundling Mc Donalds straws together. They happen to be the right diamter. Just tilt them about 5 degrees downward and keep them shaded. If you prepare these setups in the very early spring beforr your bees are out, you are likely to find they become populated very quickly once the season starts.

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Scot Mc Pherson
Foundationless Small Cell Top Bar Hives
BeeWiki: http://linuxfromscratch.org/~scot/beewiki/

[dcross]

There's a guy in WA or OR selling mason bees in tubes, he's been doing it for some time, People magazine had an article a few months ago, but it was pretty light on bee info.