[Dave360]

I have a feral hive in a tree about 30 feet from my back door I need to remove they have been there about 3 years and have gotten much more defensive never bothered us before but now if you get within 10 -15 feet they will sting my wife has been stung 5 times this year i have been stung 3 times
we are new beekeepers just got one colony a month ago
my question is i want to trap the bees instead of just killing have read about placing a cone and hive box with brood and stores but i don't have extra frame of brood i do have extra hive body frames with foundation and some medium frames with drawn comb i was wandering if i could put up hive body frames and a queen in a re queening frame with sugar water in hive feeder

any thoughts would be very much appreciated

Thanks Dave

 

[brac]

Is your queen marked? You may want to mark her at least until you can trap out or otherwise get rid of the "hot bees" in the tree. If your queen gets superceded she would be able to mate with drones from the tree. Not a good thing.
I guess your not intrested in doing a cut-out?

 

[G3farms]

ou said you got a colony a month ago.........did you buy an established hive, nuc or package bees?

If it was an established hive just rob one frame of brood from them, be sure it has eggs so that they can make another queen. Now you can do your trap out.

Doing a cut out would prove to be better, the tree already has a hollow place in it and if close to your house could be dangerous.

I think you are also far enough south for AHB so be careful there.

 

[Dave360]

Thanks for replies marking queen is probaly a good idea
yes it was a full hive and they are getting stronger but not a real strong colony so i would hate to rob then of brood might be able to take some stores i was wandering if i put in a queen in would they accept her ( i was planning on leaving her caged for couple of days) and should i put her in in begining or after a couple days after some of the bees have moved into box


Thanks again

 

[USCBeeMan]

You might not want to trap them. Being in Texas you are in AHB country. Bees are getter hotter just by being near the tree sounds like AHB trait. You might want to just kill them. Spray them with soapy water to kill them and not destroy the comb in the tree. Perhaps a new swarm will take up home there and be nicer bees to trap out.

Speaking of trapping out.... if these are AHB bees then every bee you trap out will be AHB. The hive they go into will be AHB. To get them changed over you would have to put in a mated queen to guarentee that the queen will not be AHB. Don't know much about acceptance of queens to AHBs. But I would assume that it would take some time for them to accept her. Probably would have to spray whole hive with SW mixed with lemon grass oil over a period of time before letter her out.