[LSBees]

Here is a new one for me, a Landlord wants to hire me to do a cut out on some bees that I believe are in the soffit. Here's my problem, he had the entrance sprayed a month ago. Of course now the colony appears to be strong and he now understands that spraying wont help him.

So I can now pick up a few bucks doing the cut out but what do I do with the bees and comb? He sprayed the hole in the wall (entrance) but the bees are above and dont seem to be effected.

Do I kill of the bees because they may be contaminated or do I simply hive them away by themselves somewhere?

Thanks

 

[beekeeper1756]

Clearly, the bees survived and even more have hatched that the pesticides could not reach.

The comb around the entrance is surely contaminated with poisons but the bees may have been able to overcome that.

I would capture the bees and transfer to a hive body with frames. I would still get as much broodcomb as possible and rubber band it into the frames.

I would not eat the honey.

 

[peacekeeperapiaries]

I would go after it and save the bees. If it didnt kill them 30 days ago and they are still flourishing why kill them. I would carefully chose some brood comb (as far away and protected from the entrance hole as you can find) placing it into you empty frames like normal, and would limit the amount of brood comb i actually took. The rest of the brood and honey comb I would place in sealed plastic bags so as not to poison any other bees or animals that might be drawn to it. Remove the brood comb frames from you new hive as soon as you can.

 

[cow pollinater]

Charge more! The bees are part of your pay and you have reason to believe that they might not make it.
That being said, I've seen this same thing a few times. Usually they just kill the foragers that they get spray contact with but the colony is fine.
When I do cutouts, I just prop the whole thing up as best as I can in an empty deep with an excluder and drawn foundation over that. A few days later I find the queen in the bottom and mover her over the excluder. A few days after that I scrape any queen cells out of the bottom mess and then I wait... They will move up and anything useable in the bottom moves up with them. Then just discard the comb in the bottom box and you have bees on clean comb and the pesticides go in the trash.

 

[MikeJ]

It would be interesting to send some of those bees in to have them blended up and checked for present chemicals. Do the same with some "clean" bees see if there is much difference. Might be interesting.

 

[JohnBeeMan]

I would double the fee and place the cutout into the oldest and most desposable equipment that I own. I would quickly rotate out all extracted comb as fast as possible if colony survives.

 

[LSBees]

Thanks everyone, I have an appointment next weekend to do the cut out, initially probing suggest the hive is very far from the opening in the wall, I will take that as plus as well. I will plan to keep the bees and scrap the comb other than brood comb to get them going.