Not so frayed nerves for a rookie hive cutout

Started by Jedda, October 17, 2014, 09:16:07 AM

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Jedda

 After all the swarming and failure to keep one last month, I finally had a chance to plan for the cut out of the drum hive. We just had the temperatures drop drastically earlier in the week, so I decided to take advantage the situation by waiting till the weather warmed enough for the bees to be exposed to the weather for a few hours, but still cool enough for me to be covered up. I was going to invest in a full bee suit for the job, but after having a think about it and reading reviews I decided to go with a white chemical suit and my veil, so I really wanted a cooler day to be dressed like that.

For anyone who doesn't know my situation, I had a swarm of bees move into an oil drum last year and I've spent the last year working out what to do. I put the oil drum onto another empty drum at first and then when they filled that, onto a brood box hoping they would move down into it but it never happened. The good thing about that mistake was that the bees now enter at the bottom so demolishing the drum hive wouldn't be as disruptive as a normal hive cut out.

I took a good hour to get prepared this morning, some of it was from nerves as made sure I had everything I needed. I also hung a large tarp near the hive blocking the bees access to the street to protect anyone that might be walking by. I began the cut out by lightly smoking the entry, then drilling holes into the drums to allow my air shears access, then I cut the drums vertically down the middle. I then cut from these slots around the drum making an I shape on each drum, which allowed me to simply fold out the sides and expose the hive. Just after I cut the first vertical slot a bee flew out at me and made me flinch a lot shh :-P

Once the drum was open and the bees smoked I took my first tentative cut at the comb with a serrated knife. It was a tough piece of dry honey comb and I was surprised to find nothing in it. Luckily that was the only bit like that as the next comb was jam packed with capped honey. After a little while I found a method and began rapidly clearing the bottom drum as I brushed bees off comb and placed it into a sealed plastic box. I found a lot of densely packed capped brood in the bottom drum along with lots of uncapped brood. This is the first time I've ever handled comb and had the chance to inspect it so I say I did the best job as I was too busy gawking at stuff Id only seen pictures/video of before. I was also pretty focused on getting the brood cut to fit in my frames and getting them into the new brood chamber asap.

Almost every time I went to cut more comb a small squadron of bees would dart out and bounce off my hands and veil, and after a while it didn't bother me. After an hour of experiencing this, it started to become fun and Id lost any nerves Id started out with. I could tell by the hive buzz whether they were ok or not and whether I could continue or give them a minute to calm down. Because I was in the chemical suit I had to be careful to take things slowly so I didn't overheat and I think it really helped with keeping the bees calm.

When Id cleared the lower drum and moved onto the top drum I was expecting a lot more frames of brood but found only honey. I put a couple of capped combs into frames for the bees and kept the rest as it was just too messy trying to put that stuff back into the hive. So I put 3 empty frames in with starter strips to fill out the hive box. I could only fit 9 frames because the wild brood comb was quite thick and wavy, so I had to allow room for this even after Id straightened it as much as possible. The upper drum was a bit more tricky to clear as the comb was pretty wild in shape and the tube for the funnel was in the middle of it all, that and at least half the hive had migrated up there instead of down.

Once I got the last comb section out I moved the old brood box off the bottom board and put the new one with the bees in place, shook the old brood box of bees onto the new one, then put the drum back on top and smoked the bees down out of the drum. It took quite a bit of smoke to get them to start moving and I still had to shake the last large clump out. I'm pretty sure the queen was in there somewhere and I was careful to make sure they all landed into the brood box. I check the ground around the hive for the queen, and kept checking for some time after till almost all the bees on the ground had left. I also inspected the dead bees that had been stepped on just to be sure; there were only a few of those luckily.

After Id finished up with the bees I put on the lid and noticed bees on the landing board fanning away, probably trying to clear the smell of smoke cause I really gave it to them to clear the drum once and for all! While I cleaned up I kept an eye on things and noticed the field bees were already back to work, and after 2 hours all appeared to be normal with the hive again with bees coming and going and a handful of guard bees out front who weren't the least bit concerned by my presents. The only problem I had was the ants were straight onto the spilt honey around the hive so took a few goes at washing the honey away to get them to back off.

I had the video camera going but didn't have time to take photo's during the cut out so I'll try to get it on youtube asap. Any advice on what I should or shouldn't be doing next will be very much appreciated and thanks for reading about my adventure with bees :-D

texanbelchers

Sounds like you did a great job and had fun.  I've only done 2 cutouts and each were different.  As far as advice I can only say it is better to have too much equipment and be over prepared.  It seems I could do removals every weekend, but my wife says I can't have more hives.   :(  I'll just have to make each one bigger....   :evil: :-D

GSF

When the law no longer protects you from the corrupt, but protects the corrupt from you - then you know your nation is doomed.

Rmcpb

Great report, I enjoyed reading it.

Cheers
Rob.
Cheers
Rob.

Jedda

Sorry guys, I've been tearing my hair out trying to edit the video I took and having lots of "technical difficulties". I've discovered I wasn't quite prepared enough though, I lost a good hour of footage after the camera battery went flat and lost a bunch of files :( I should have ran an extension cable and ran off mains power.

BeeMaster2

Sounds like you did great.
Do you have small hive beetles? I don't think so but if you did, I would not put the honey in the hive. SHBs would have about 3 days of free range of your hive to take it over before the bees start getting them under control again.
Jim
Democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.
Ben Franklin

jayj200

Mine says no more too

did a cut out last Sunday and boy were they nice, before during and after the cutout.

I had promised to give them away so I did.

my others get rude after 30 minuets in.

so yes I want some like that

Jedda

Quote from: sawdstmakr on October 18, 2014, 08:32:19 AM
Sounds like you did great.
Do you have small hive beetles? I don't think so but if you did, I would not put the honey in the hive. SHBs would have about 3 days of free range of your hive to take it over before the bees start getting them under control again.
Jim

I only saw 2 of them (both now deceased :'(), but yes I have these annoying bugs here. I guess the only saving grace is that I put the honey frame between two empty starter strip frames so there is some separation from the rest of the comb.

My son who has just turned 5 was very excited about the bees making honey, so today he watched as I squished the excess honey comb by hand. We got about 5 pounds/2kg of honey.

The bees started to clean house with a vengeance today, saw lots of dead brood, old comb and wax capping's getting dragged out. I also saw a few drones getting booted out too, I guess they didn't need those lazy lay-about's in the way today :-D. The foragers were off working in normal numbers again today

After updating every driver known to microsoft I still cant edit my video's so it may take a few days to sort out :(

Jedda

 Did my first inspection of the hive today and all is going well so far. Numbers are still a little low from all the swarming, but I found the queen and 4 frames of eggs and brood. The bees have almost drawn out a frame of starter strip, which is where I found the queen. Saw about a dozen hive beetles but no damage so far, so I installed some beetle traps when I was finished. The frame of capped honey I put in there is now uncapped and all the capping's were on the floor. When I went to sweep them out I found it solid with wax moth larvae cocoons so scrapped them all out (was wondering why the bees were leaving such a mess down there). I found a huge amount of drones camped up in the hive; on the floor in a large pile, and the rest hiding under the lid. I've observed the guards trying to turf them out since I first did the cut out. I ended up squeezing the frames together to fit in frame 10 after reading that its unwise to leave it with only 9. Next time I go in I'll cut out the wavy bits of comb to make more space. I would have done it today but I took too long with the inspection and ran out of time according to the bees ;). I've been trying to feed the scrap honey back to the bees, but there has been fairly little interest in it, so I'll save it for later in the season when the nectar flow reduces. The only thing I've got left to do is get the hive registered :)

The bees have been like a totally different animal since they went into the hive box, they are very calm and appear to be very happy with their new home. We have had a few very hot days and there has been no bearding or even fanning. They were fairly calm today with only the occasional bee hovering around my face. At the end of the inspection I got a couple of bee bullets fly out and hit my hat, but I took far too long so it was understandable. Once I covered them back up they were fine.

I shot more video which I will try to get online, but I'm still having problems with my video editing software which keeps crashing when I use it.

Lots of thanks to this forum for advice on finding the queen, I've trawled this forum for advice and it ended being pretty easy in the end, much easier in real life than the practise Ive done watching youtube videos. It also helped that she wasn't interested in running and hiding. This thread really helped http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,44082.0.html

BeeMaster2

Good job Jedda. Sounds like it went real well.
Jim
Democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.
Ben Franklin

Jedda

Quote from: sawdstmakr on October 29, 2014, 06:02:47 AM
Good job Jedda. Sounds like it went real well.
Jim

It did go well, and being the first time I've actually got my hands on a frame of bees it was also a relief to finally be at this point, because barring the cut out day, all I've been able to do is observe the entrance and guess what was going on inside.

I must have started something kicking all the drones out on the bottom board, the girls have put in double time kicking them back out again today.

BeeMaster2

Jedda,
There are 3 things that affect drone production:
The number of bees in the hive.
The amount of stores the hive has.
The time of the year.
In your case, both of the first 2 have been seriously reduced so they stop supporting the drones.
Jim
Democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.
Ben Franklin