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bees in trees

1K views 1 reply 2 participants last post by  Michael Bush 
#1 ·
Hi, I Gave my cards to the Fire dept and other depts that would get swarm calls.I have gotten a few swarms that way. I have two hives in large hollow trees. is there a way to capture the bees and not kill the tree Thanks Dan
 
#2 ·
I have gotten most of the bees out of a tree without doing anything to the tree. This is much easier if you have bees already. The simplest thing to do is just make a screen wire cone and cover the main entrance and staple screen on all the other entrances. Every night brush off the cluster of bees into a box and take them home to your other hive or put them in a box with a few frames of brood and honey. If your hive is more than 2 miles from the tree they will stay there. If you do this every day for a couple of weeks there will be few bees left. After the hive in the tree is depleted, put a strong hive by the tree and dump some honey down the hole of the tree hive to set off robbing and let the strong hive rob out the tree. There is a good video available from Brushy Mt. on the subject "free bees for you" that goes into a lot of the detail. The basic "cone method" is outlined in ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture. However I have not had luck making it work the way it is described there. I have done it the way I described here.
 
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