Is It To Late And How To Trap Out Hives

[tedlemay]

Anyone with experience on trap outs.............. received a call with a house with 2 beehives in it , one in either end. have never tried a trap out but would like too! need advice as to how to begin. some say to use a queen some say no. do you use a nuc or a lang. they are both easy to get to so thats not an issue. is it to late in the year for north Alabama. should i ask the owner to wait till spring? the house is for sale so i figure they want them out now. need the proceedures you would use then i can begin and figure it out on my way through but if its not worth the effort i need to knoe that also! Thanks in advance!

[AmericasBeekeeper]

If they want them out now you can vacuum them out. What is your plan for the comb, brood and food that is left behind? It would be better to do a cut-out unless it is a block wall.

[tedlemay]

my plan was to trap them out then do the cut out! not for sure but my guess is that the hive is in the basement ceiling(finished basement). did not want to do a live cutout insidethe house. i was thinking the bees would not build in a wall with the insulation. when i go back over, i have a stethescope and will locate them then!

[Intheswamp]

I'm a newbee so take it for what it's worth, but...

Wouldn't doing a trap-out and then a cut-out be kind of...wrong? I mean, if you do a trap-out you get all the foragers in the trap, leaving the queen, some house bees, and the brood, honey, and pollen still in there with probably some small hive beetles. The trap-out will take at least a couple of weeks (from what I've read) and in that time will lower the number of house bees making it easier for the small hive beetles to work their nasties on the colony. There's also a chance that during that time that the queen and a small swarm will abscond the hive and be forever lost to you. Rarely (again ,from what I've read) will a trap-out produce the queen...and to me, the queen and her genes is what it's all about.

I would take the option of doing a cut-out and forget the trapout. Naturally if the house is occupied at the time you would have to take precautions such as putting up barriers to keep the bees from spreading to other areas of the house. I would think a bee-vac is essential.

Doing a cut-out would to begin with would insure that the bees, brood, and comb are in as healthy a condition as you can get them....it seems to be that waiting for a trap-out to complete would create a possibly of getting far less than premium brood and comb. You also have an excellent chance of catching the queen!

Just my thoughts, best wishes on the removals,
Ed

[David LaFerney]

If you want to get rid of the bees the best time to do a trap out is probably early in the spring because, Populations and stores will both be relatively low, and when foragers stop bringing back food the hive will either die or abscond pretty soon.

If you wait until the hive has lots of stores (like now) it can live on those for a long time, also since foraging season is about to end the trap out won't make much of a dent in the food supply for a long time. It's also too late to establish the trap hive here. On the other hand if you started one now the hive wouldn't even have a chance to get started in the spring - you wouldn't be likely to get any bees though.

If you want to do the trap out for free bees then you would want to wait until the populations are high.

[hemichuck]

The vast majority of trapouts that I have attempted have been futile.They take a lot of time and effort and you rarely get the queen.really all you would get now would be the foragers. At this point in time you would be much better off just cutting them out and trying to hive them or combining them with other hives.It would be tough to get them established and built up for winter but you can feed,feed,feed and hope for the best and if they dont build up enough then you can put them in nucs and put them in a shed or put candyboards on them. Good luck.

[David LaFerney]

In my opinion the best reason to do a trap out is to get rid of the bees without the expense of doing a cut out. It's way too much trouble to go to for "free" bees, but it can work to get them out without a lot of expensive, messy demolition/reconstruction work. It's something that a qualified bee keeper should charge for.

If the cavity isn't filled up and sealed up it's futile though, because a swarm will probably move right back in within a couple of years. That's what happened to the last one I did. Not my fault. I told them.

[Cleo C. Hogan Jr]

intheswamp.... There is a myth that you cannot get the queen with a trap out. I do it all the time. Get her on virtually every attempt, and I do dozens each year. The method is to place your trap immediately adjacent to the feral colony. Completely seal the trap to the feral colony entrance. Place one comb with some unsealed brood, and a couple frames drawn comb in your trap. The queen will almost always immediately come into the trap to see who is laying eggs in her house. When she finds no queen, she will start laying in the trap, and go back and forth between the trap and the feral source. System works best when you can put the trap very near the brood nest of the feral colony.

If you want to eliminate the colony you will need a small funnel which you can close off to keep her in the trap, or leave her in the feral colony. To see how it works, go on the Kelly Bee Company website, click on Swarm Harvester, then build you one. Works GREAT.

cchoganjr