A trap out is frustrating if there are multiple entrances--they can chew through a lot of stuff to get back to the brood nest. One inch holes are pretty easy to repair, so you might try punching in a few more...
First cutout a bust
Well folks, my first cutout was a bust. In the pic I have attached, you can see the main entrance at the corner of a soffit. I suspected that the brood nest was located in the soffitt and used a stethoscope to confirm. I could hear bee sounds for about four feet from the main entrance. I made a 1'X1' opening on the end with my saw and, much to my dismay, I found insulation and no bees.
I made some comparisons with my own bees on the farm. On the first trip out there a couple of days ago, no bees were flying. My bees were flying, although not much. Today mine were flying like crazy, and the bees at the cutout location had pretty good activity, but not the same as mine back home. I'm sure that this is due to a population difference.
Anyway, we looked all through the soffit and didn't find anything. I went into their attics and didn't see anything, with the exception of a few bees flying in a small attic storage space adjacent to the main bee entrance. Most of the walls/floors/ceilings in there were insulated. I checked them all with a stethoscope and couldn't find anything.
Any ideas folks? I've heard of people using infrared thermometers, etc.
Next step I'm going to attempt is a trap out.......
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I made some comparisons with my own bees on the farm. On the first trip out there a couple of days ago, no bees were flying. My bees were flying, although not much. Today mine were flying like crazy, and the bees at the cutout location had pretty good activity, but not the same as mine back home. I'm sure that this is due to a population difference.
Anyway, we looked all through the soffit and didn't find anything. I went into their attics and didn't see anything, with the exception of a few bees flying in a small attic storage space adjacent to the main bee entrance. Most of the walls/floors/ceilings in there were insulated. I checked them all with a stethoscope and couldn't find anything.
Any ideas folks? I've heard of people using infrared thermometers, etc.
Next step I'm going to attempt is a trap out.......
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I actually made a 1 square foot hole....
Learned alot of valuable lessons today.... First is to use a hole saw on a drill to check before cutting. Thinking about getting a scope as well. I was able to look all down the soffit through a crack at the top where I could peek in. No bees. On the right of the pic, the soffit takes a 45 degree turn up to about a 30ft high peak. No insulation, so they could be in there, but the ladder they had wouldn't go all the way up. There was no crack for me to be able to see in there. I did listen with a stethoscope and didn't hear anything.
Anyway, I guess my concern was that there were so many possibilities that I didn't really know what to do next. The could have been in the wall just below the soffit, because it's the garage wall and uninsulated. They could have been in the wall on the left side around the corner, because again, it was uninsulated. The could have been in the soffit going up to the peak. Could have been in the floor between the two levels, however, most of this is insulated because it was above the garage. The homeowner said that one of their older sons thought he heard bees in the wall on the other side of the house. Too many possibilities!
I wanted to look inside some of the possible cavities some more (I would have gotten a hole saw), but felt weird about just making holes blindly as opposed to taking an educated guess...When it gets to a point such as this, what do you do?
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