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Feral Bee Hunting

2.7K views 7 replies 8 participants last post by  jmgi  
#1 ·
Hey there:

I've been on awhile trying to find info on best ways to find "wild" bees in the woods. I know our woods around here have some escaped swarms, and also some "wild" bees.

I've still not found any, ride my atv as much as I can in the woods, look and listen a lot, but so far, no honey bees. I plan on baiting me some "traps" and put up some nucs in a few places before spring gets here, so maybe I can harvest some.

Anyone with any info/data, etc. please chime in. Love to hear from you. I am doing some research and trying to gather info.

Best,

casper_zip
 
#3 ·
I think it was in an old FoxFire I read about this. They used a plate with honey / sugar on it and when there were several bees placed them in a box. They would take one out (don't remember how) and glue a fluffed piece of cotton to it and let her go. Follow until they lost sight and then repeated.
 
#5 ·
Yep, do a search! Dump the ATV and get ready to walk! Afterall bees forage about 2 miles from home. I do not know what your landscape is like, but if you have open ground arround a woodlot. Head for the woodlot put out a plate with some honey on it, they will find it, get there fill and head for home, take the plate to were you lost sight of the last bee and start over. You'll find them. Be assured you are going to do a lot sitting and waiting and if there are more than one ferral, you're going to be walking in circles. Then IF you find the little darlings, they will probably be 20' + up. Good luck, I've got better things to do.

As a side note, I have found a couple of bee trees deer hunting, in mild weather I take some honey and squert it on a tree, deer like/smell it also. :D
 
#7 ·
A "take off" of the plat of honey... bees returning to the hive fly in a reasonably straight line back to the hive. So this method requires some mapping & GPS skills. Place a plate of honey out and measure its UTM on your GPS let the bees find it and measure the compass reading back to the hive. Go to 2 other locations at different corners of the wood plot and repeat. After you get those readings plot the data on a topo map. If the bees are all from the same hive, all 3 lines should meet very close to the same point... work out that UTM and go there and start looking for the hive.. it should be very close.. if you cannot find it... put more honey out and watch there return flight... and walk in that direction... it should be a short distance....

I did this many years back with a friend simply to find a hive... before the advent of GPS's... so today should be much easier...
 
#8 ·
I tried finding feral bees once by putting out a plate of sugar syrup next to some flowers that the bees were working. Before long I had a bee or two, I waited about a half hour and those first two bees went back to the hive and told others, so then there were more coming. Then I got a couple different colors of latex paint and a model painting brush and put a dab of paint from each color on a couple different bees thorax's as they came to the dish. Then I timed each bee with a watch to see how long it took for them to make a round trip from the dish to the hive and back. That will give you some idea how far away they are. The round trip took almost exactly 5 minutes with every bee I marked. Then I did what others suggested above and caught about 10 bees in a jar and walked in the direction of the bees flight, releasing one bee at a time and watching where it went, released another and walked further until the bees led me to the hive which was about a half mile away. The bees ended up coming from someone else's hives. :cry: John