Well, after a total of 13 hours doing the pillar cutout (including drive time and installing into my TBH) I also caught a swarm in my own yard. Well, the swarm absconded. Today I went back to gather the remaining bees from the pillar(another 3 hrs). I went to add them to the TBH, and guess what? They had absconded too! I had put a ton of their broodcomb and honey comb in the TBH and they had enough room, so why did they leave? Now I have a couple handfulls of bees from the cutout and the swarm, which I dumped into the TBH, but I am resigning myself to believe it is a lost cause. What a lot of time wasted!
time is not wasted if you learned something. losing hives sucks, but it happens. doing the cutout was instructive. you spent 13 hours of hands on learning. you could have spent 13 hours trying to stay awake in a class lecture. which would have been more valuable?
They leave if you don't get the queen. They abscond when honey is dripping on them or if ants or some other pest infiltrated the hive.
...JP
Kathy, thank you; point well taken :-D. JP, I wasn't sure about the queen with the cutout, and they did have dripping honey, and there were some ants in there when I opened it today. I will not stay discouraged for long. I did see a few bees hanging around the entrances of my swarm traps in the yard today. I will keep my fingers crossed! Thank you all again :)
Hang tight, try and enjoy yourself as much as possible and learn from your mistakes and it'll all start to fall in place. You'll see.
...JP
What a marathon cut out. I'm glad to hear your w/ swarm traps as thats how I finally captured yesterday my absconding queen & her workers that were 40ft up in oaktree. I screwed up my garage cut out by not getting queen & many workers but succeeded in acquiring the queen & workers all the same albeit in longer time frame. We are all learning here thanks to our sharing of experiences good bad & ugly.
Cheers, David
Well, I'm trying to salvage the few bees I have left from the swarm and the cutout. I cleaned out the TBH and threw out the sopping wet comb. I left several in that still had capped brood. I dumped in the double handfull left over from the swarm that absconded, and cut a frame of eggs out of an overcrowded nuc to fit the TBH and put it in there. Hopefully it'll work!
Helpful Hint..........................
On a cutout, save only the brood comb, not the honey or pollen comb. Unless you save it to crush or feed back. Do not frame it and add it to the hive.
I am so glad, Idee, that you mentioned the honey comb not be put into a hive after a cutout. I would like to know if it can be fed to them in some other form after they have been put in a hive? seems they would enjoy their own honey.
Yes, it can. Some dilute it with 50% water and put in feeders like sugar water. Others just set it out and let them rob it out. The latter will have some bee deaths, and in a dearth, may incite robbing of hives.
i take the scrap comb and lay it out on a tarp away from the hives. that seems to keep the fighting and robbing down. they clean it up in short order. the good stuff i keep for me :-)
I'm gonna beg to differ here on transferring comb sections with honey. As long as your cuts are nice and clean and a flow is on, I don't see a problem.
If no flow, robbing can be a real issue, but then again, hive entrances can be reduced.
...JP
JP, I'll compromise with you. The first 100 cutouts, brood only.
After the first 100, frame up honey and pollen.
How's that?? :lol:
I don't transfer honey comb with a cut out. Around here that'd bee asking for SHB takeover. I'll feed sure, but the already stressed bees seem to have a hard time competing with the beetles so I try to play it safe(er).
Scott