Hi everyone. I just built my bee vac but did not make a hole for a hose yet. I am hoping some of you may give me a good input on this subject. I have a 6hp 'shop vac' motor attached to it and I would like to attach transparent hose to it with "bear claw" attachment on the end. However, this hose is a lot wider than conventional vacuum cleaner hose. I have seen number of videos and almost all of them, accept one, show bee vacs with regular vacuum cleaner hose. I guess my worries are about leaving some of the bees behind inside the hose since it is not transparent.
I have used the 2" shop vac hose with success. But it is short. And I think I have had better luck with the 1 1/2" hose. In either case I have had to "rattle" the hose to get the last of the bees inside the box. I will be moving to pool vac hose next season just because of length.
I built the "Robo" design and feel it works well.
No matter what size hose you decide to use, just be sure to get the suction down low enough to barely pull the bees into the hose. If it sounds like a hand full of ball bearings rattling down the pipe it ends up as dead bees. I use the 2 1/2" shop vac hose, can be found at lowes or HD or even some good yard sales.
Thanks all of you for your input. I was thinking about 4" transparent hose from Pen State Industries (http://www.pennstateind.com/store/D50C.html) . But knowing that all of you out there get around with regular 2" or 2.5" makes my life a little easier. My vacuum is finished, except the hose, so as soon as it is all together I will upload pictures so you guys can give me some constructive criticism.
2-1/2" is what I recommend.
http://www.beevac.com/videos/ (http://www.beevac.com/videos/)
When I built mine this summer I was told not to use anything smaller than the 2 1/2" hose. Any narrower and the bees are bounced and dragged along the wall of the hose. Made sense to me so I X'ed the 1 1/4" hose that came with the vac and bought a 2 1/2". So far, very low body count. In fact, you're not going to believe this but I have used it several times where I didn't have one dead bee!!
I find that I loose more bees when I suck them off of open cells of nectar/honey, it will pull a small amount of the honey out and coat the bees and inside of the hose. You need to be careful and not suck up the sticky stuff.