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Bee Removal from Tree

3K views 8 replies 5 participants last post by  honeyman46408 
#1 ·
My neighbor has a hive of bees in a tree in his back yard that he would like to be removed and I would like to capture the field workers and introduce them into one of my weaker hives. What is the best way to capture the bees? They seem to have only one entrance that is about 8 feet off of the ground. Also, after I remove what bees I can, how do I deal with the remaining bees? They are bothering the swimmers in a nearby swimming pool.

Thanks for your help.

C. Hunt

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#2 ·
My best luck with trees has been to cover the entrance with a cone. Aim it up a bit and make it out of screen wire. Leave some ends of the wires showing around the end of the cone and make it big enough that a drone can only squeeze through it. If you do this then the bees can get out but not in. Make or buy a bee vac or, if you prefer you can just brush them. Go every evening when all of the feild bees come back and can't get in and brush the big clump of bees in a box and take them back to your hive (at least two miles away) and dump them in a box on top with newspaper (at first). The next day the newspaper won't be necessary because they will have united and they will be in chaos anyway. Now every day you bring back the excess bees hanging on the cone until they hive in the tree has dwindeled to almost nothing. Then you can either fill the tree with foam or something to close it off, or you can put a strong hive in front and try to incite them to rob the tree. A little honey spill by the entrance for bait might do it.
 
#3 ·
I didn't mention. The downside of all this is that while the entrance is blocked there are a lot of confused (NOT at all angry, just disoriented) bees and they will circle trying to figure out where there is another entrance or if the hive moved etc. People afraid of bees cannot tell the difference between confused bees and angry bees and they often assume they are angry and go after them with raid. Which not only kills the bees, but DOES make them angry. My biggest problem doing this has been people getting frustrated at the bees that are now buzzing around lost. They probably have no idea there ARE that many bees.
 
#6 ·
No it won't. As the field bees don't come back some of the house bees will take to the fields and then you'll get them. And then more of the house bees. It will take several days to a week to pretty much capture the population of the hive and then you still have bees emerging all the time. I'd plan on getting the bees every night for at least a week. If it's a strong hive with lots of brood and lots of emerging brood will keep adding to the population enough that you may want to do it longer than that. It's the old frog jumping half way across the log question. The population will keep dropping but you won't quite get to nothing ever. Somewhere you reach a point of diminishing returns and give up. How long that takes depends on the strength of the hive, your patience etc. Also there are often other cracks in the tree and the bees start finding them. How long they use them and how long it takes you to realize it and block them will also play into how long it takes to capture the majority of the population.
 
#9 ·
You can put a hive body with a frame of brood with fresh eggs just above and let them raise a queen and you won`t have to go there every day.
Bushy Mountain has a vedio on this subject called Free Bees.
 
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