I got a call from a lady this week who was going to burn down her storage building to get rid of honeybees that had been there for the past 10 years. I told her I would come over and remove them. I have never done a cutout before so this will be valuable experience for me. Thanks to the Gathering at Bud's last month with JP & Brendhan giving us a few cutout training classes I feel comfortable in knowing how to tackle the job. Thankfully my 1st one will be in a wooden shed that doesn't need to be repaired. I also will be using the Bushkill Bee Vac for the 1st time.
I will take the camera for pics and maybe even video the ordeal. I'm going solo, so it may not be pretty. Thanks for all you who have posted your cutout experiences for us to gather info. from.
GW
Best of luck to you. Hope all goes smoothly, have fun & take pictures or a video.
...JP
Well, if she was willng to burn it down, you don't have to worry about doing excess damage! :-D Good luck with it. I have my first one lined up too, hopefully next weekend; two separate hives in the gables of one house.
Just take your time and think it through, it will fall into place as you go.
Doing one is a real confidence builder.
G3
Nothing like experience , the first time ,sucks ,is great , wow i did that .
Just enjoy figuring it out.
Good luck. Don't worry. It'll all work out fine.
PS. Be sure your ins. and will are up to date... :evil:
Good luck Gene. Sounds like a lot of fun.
Whew, My hats off to all you who do cutouts!, That was a workout. Photo's will be coming soon. The comb was from the top of an 8' ceiling to about 1 1/2' from the bottom, Then there was comb being built from the floor upwards (inverted)? There were also 3 entrances to the wall void. I was wondering if the inverted comb on the bottom was a different colony since the 2 sets of comb were not connected?
Also, I used my new bee vac and it worked great. I now have 2 medium supers with foundationless frames full of bees. Do I need to leave them in there and let them build comb or what? I never saw the queen during the cutout, My flashlight bulb went out and I had no backup. There were so many crooks and crannies the bees were running to I'm not certain if she got vac'd or she is missing? I framed 15 medium frames with comb that has capped and uncapped brood. There were about 8 unhatched queen cells scattered throughout the comb as well that were secured into frames.
http://s889.photobucket.com/albums/ac98/walker314/1st%20Bee%20Cutout/ (http://s889.photobucket.com/albums/ac98/walker314/1st%20Bee%20Cutout/)
Thanks for all the encouragement.
GW
HAHA sounds like you had a good time with it and it is a real confidence booster to do one.
Glad you got them put up.
Sorry I cna't answer you on the foundationless, I don't do that.
Check back in on them in 4 to 5 days and look for eggs, if you have eggs then you got the queen. If no eggs then you missed the queen, but you have queen cells to fall back on.
G3
i think your queen might be on the close up of the brood. hope you got that piece in :-D
so you banded the brood comb in and used foundationless for additional frames? that should work fine.
nice job ,did the queen cells in the hive hatched.if not did you get to save them. ...schawee
I think your Queen right kathyp. I didn't look at that pic very close. Maybe I didn't pop her with a rubber band. I framed all the brood and comb with queen cells. I don't have any comb in the 2 medium boxes that I used with the bee vac, not sure what to do with those bees. Thats where the majority of the bees are.
GW
Quote from: schawee on May 16, 2010, 12:03:52 AM
nice job ,did the queen cells in the hive hatched.if not did you get to save them. ...schawee
No, There were about 8 that were still sealed. I put them in different frames and boxes.
thats great good job , even if you did everything wrong, so what you did it
I think you did great the more you do the better you will get.
pics look good. god isnt fun!