Bee Vac

[WOOLY BEE]

Can Anyone tell me about a bee vac? Is this just a shop vac, or do you have to make modifications? How do you use it to recover a colonie from a structure? I just removed 3 colonies from a house that was being demolished, aaaand it was a total disaster for the bees. I lost all 3 colonies. I thought if I could vacumn the bees out before i cut the comb out i would have a better chance at saving the bees.
Any suggestions?

[tobeeornottobee]

Wooly, i had to remove a hive from my eaves last year. It was my first encounter with bees. I was quite a battle as I was up on my porch roof stretching to saw open and then remove the bees and comb. I found plans for a bee vac on ebay. i just looked tonight and there is an auction for one again (It includes plans on building a hive as well as an extractor). I made one out materials that I had available and used a shop vac. It worked great. None of the bees that I vacuumed appeared to be hurt. (the hive didn't surveive because I waited until too late in the year to remove it. Also, I didn't get the queen. But this year I bought my first package and two nucs. I'm having fun now! Email address:Mark Skeen [mark@nordykebeefarm.com]

[jdb5949]

There are excellent plans available for free on the beesource homepage. The plans include a great beevac as well as plans for many types of standard hives.

[TwT]

this is what I did to modify a shop vac so it wouldn't kill the bee's

http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubb...;f=12;t=000543

heres some pic's to give you the idea

http://beemaster.com/beebbs/viewtopic.php?t=2775

[nickoli]

I just finished building one off the plans here on the site, it seems to have enough suction, and if it doesn't rain this weekend, I will be trying it out on a bee tree.

[Michael Bush]

I seldom use one. I've killed a lot of bees with them and don't wish to repeat the process. [img]smile.gif[/img]

When they work they are ok. But there's not much you do with one that you can't do without one.

I do have one though.

[WOOLY BEE]

Thanks all. Nicoli let me know how the vac works. Please. Michael, I couldn't possibly do worse with a vac. I killed some nice bees, and left thousands to fend for themselves. This was a bad experience that I won"t repeat. I didn't want to remove the colonies to start with, but my friend sang me a sad song about his crew being shut down due to the bees. I had no clue how to retrieve the bees and rehive them. I have two other people wanting me to remove colonies in buildings. They are all easy enough to get to and they aren't worried about damage to the buildings. I will try to find someone in my area for advice. Anr help from ya"all will be appreciated.

[jim b]

Harbor Freight has a motor speed control that is for small 110 volt A.C. motors. I bought one for about $10.00 but haven't used it except to plug it in to try it. It seemed to me that it would work to control the flow.