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A Question From The ABK website - How to Remove Bees?
I am hoping you are able to help with a situation I recently encountered. An arborist had been engaged to remove roadside vegetation and trees, one of these trees contained a very well-developed hive of bees. The pest control called to remove the bees which they promptly sprayed. Would an apiarist be able to find another means of removing the bees or managing the situation in a different way? The tree had to be removed for a road extension but if the situation arises again I would like to know if there are any other options available rather than spraying thousands of bees.
Thanks for any advice you can offer.
Much appreciated,
Josephine
Answer:
I have often been told by ‘older’ beekeepers that in ‘the old days’, many beekeepers got their start by collecting wild hives from trees and putting them in boxes. These hives were later re-queened and eventually became productive hives. The method was also often used by beekeepers wishing to expand their apiaries.
Invariably the method use would, I imagine, have involved felling the tree and/or cutting it open to expose the comb, which would have been removed and placed in a suitable box before being removed to another site. Undoubtedly many stings would have been involved, and many bees (dead and alive) would have been left behind. In those days the splitting of the tree was often done by saw and axe – and by ‘saw’, I mean a ’handsaw’ of some description. The only time I tried, I used a chainsaw, and apart from the sawdust in the comb, it was all a bit savage and messy.
A less invasive technique, which is difficult and not 100% effective, is to set up a box on a platform of some sort, near the entrance in the tree that is being used by the bees, and then rig up a netting cone of some description that forces the bees to fly through the box (which contains frames of drawn comb) to gain access to the open air. The idea is that, over time, the bees will gradually start to fill the box with honey and will (hopefully) get the queen to move across to the box and start egg-laying. By periodically checking the box for the presence of brood, the beekeeper will know when this has happened, and an excluder can be placed over the entrance to the box to stop the queen going back into the tree. After three weeks any remaining brood in the tree will have hatched, and the hive can then be removed to a new site. The tree can then be felled, although some bees will still be lost.
If all this sounds a bit hit-and-miss, you are right!! I have used a similar method (with success) to remove a swarm from under a house roof eave, and include a photo to demonstrate the way a nuc box was used to store the (cut) comb until the queen had started laying eggs in the nuc box.
