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Removing a colony from the eve of a building.

3K views 1 reply 1 participant last post by  gmh3 
G
#1 ·
I'm new to beekeeping and today I attempted to remove a colony from the eve of building. I removed ALL of the brood and 95% of the honey comb. I could only get 1/4 of the bees. The rest of the bees clustered out of my reach. I put all the bees,brood and honey comb in a swarm box and placed it about 6-12 inches from the cluster of bees. The swarm box is in the place where the original colony was. I'm not sure if I got the queen, but I don't think I did.
Do you guys think that the rest of the bees will move into this swarm box because all their brood and honey comb is there?
Should I had went about this another way?
I had to work over my head the whole time, very tiring. If I didn't get the whole colony, at least maybe I'll have enough to start a nuc.
 
#2 ·
badwolf

i just recently did the same thing. your bees were inside the building?

mine were; i could not reach the queen. however i could reach the comb and brood. damages a lot of it getting it out.

i built a wire mesh funnel and forced the bees i wanted to go into my brood body.

i bought some frames of bees and brood with a young queen. after one week , i did not get any bees of the swarm to move over to my box. even though i had them locked out of their hive in the building.

if you did not get the queen, you can purchase one and introduce and you are on your way. depends of damage to brood and comb, if it is salvageable then you can tie the brood into some frames.

you will need to feed 1:1 sugar syrup to make a "false" nectar flow, and encourage drawing of comb, to repair and make new.

how many bees are you talking here?

you need to consider that you and i are under the gun here for getting a relatively small colony , strong again and ready to cluster with stores of honey by winter.

you can plan on feeding them until november or so.

cost wise it is probably cheaper to buy a nuc and go from there. BUT IT IS MORE FUN TO GET "FREE BEES"!!

but in order to maintain the quantity of bees that you have gotten, you will need to get the queen or introduce one, and keep them locked out of their swarm location.

good luck.

george in tennessee
 
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