Collecting bees left by commercial beeks.

[BeeMaster2]

Last year I checked on 2 commercial apiary locations days after they had moved their hives. I was able to get several thousand bees to move into nucs at each site.
This year I went to the sites the day after the bees removed. There were tens of thousands of bees left behind.
I took 3 nuc boxes in my truck. As soon as I got out of my truck at the first site I had bees buzzing me. I could not get near the 6' pole that was covered with bees. I placed the nuc on a tree stump and while placing it I took a bunch of stings. Then it fell and I had to put it back on the stump. I received at least 6 stings before I made it back to my truck. At least 6 bees followed me into my truck.
I went to the next site. There were no where near as many bees at this site. I placed the nuc on the ground next to a small pile of bees before they ran me off.
The next day I put on my jacket and placed a chair next to the pole and placed another nuc on it. They imediately started going into the nuc.
I came back the next day with a jacket and a smoker and tried to heard the bees into the nucs. The site that had very few bees at it was packed with bees.
The other 2 nucs had tens of thousands of bees around them and I tried to heard them with very few moving in. It ended up only a couple of thousand bees were in these 2 boxes.
The point of this is if you know of a commercial apiary site, give the bees a day or 2 to calm down and bee careful. They get very upset at being left behind.
Jim

[PhilK]

Score! How does this work now? All the bees are foragers, right? If you put them in a nuc with a queen will they reassign themselves roles such as nurses etc or do you just have to shake the bees you've caught into existing hives?

[BeeMaster2]

I took a frame of brood and eggs from another hive and put it in my observation hive with about 5000 of the bees. I gave them 2 drawn frames and 5 empty frames wit waxed ribs. In 24 hours they already had 2 visable queen cells started. At least half of the bees are now hanging out side of the entrance.
I opened 2 new swarm hives, smoked them and dumped the rest of the bees in the top of the supers. They are settled down now.
Jim

[Johnny]

I did the samething last year. But I took a bee vac and vacuumed them up to put in an existing hive.
But there were no bees in the hive they had absconded so like a dummy I opened the bee vac and
just let them go to feral hives in the area.  Two days later I went to get the bee vac and in my hive
there was activity so I opened it up and there were bees in there so I left them alone. I came back
10 days later and checked them again and there were eggs. There must have been a mating queen
that got left with all the forgaging bees. They did fine for a month then we had a strong wind and
cold rain that blew my hive over and I lost them to the cold this year I will vacuum them up again
and put them in a hive and see if there is a queen with them again. This year I have several hives
that i can get eggs and brood from when the time comes.

[BeeMaster2]

After having to leave more than a hive in the field this year, I plan on using a bee accent next year to collect all of the bees.
I suspect that your abscond hive may have returned to the hive with the queen or. a swarm moved in.
Jim

[little john]

If you want to collect foragers who have recently lost their 'homes', I discovered a method a few days ago, completely by accident.

The secret is to place a couple of frames of honey - preferably uncapped - into a box as near as possible to their old hive location, and walk away.  Within a short time those frames will be covered with foragers, who then won't want to leave to go anywhere else.

Curious - I set about finding out why they do this.   It appears that honey contains elements of Queen-Bee Mandibular Pheromone - which is why bees are so attracted to honey in the first place.

But how does QMP get into the honey ?  Well, this is the killer - again, elements of QMP are to be found in plant nectar, suggesting that QMP is the reason why bees are attracted to nectar.  It ain't 'instinct' at all, it's a response to pheromones.  Seems that pheromones are driving the whole darned caboodle.

Chemical communication in the honeybee (Apis mellifera L.): a review (2011)
M. Trhlin, J. Rajchard
Faculty of Agriculture, University of South Bohemia, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic

Nectar Attracts Foraging Honey Bees with Components of Their Queen Pheromones.
Liu F., Gao J., Di N., (China), and Adler LS. Department of Biology, University of Massachusetts,
J Chem Ecol., 2015 Nov;41(11):1028-36.

LJ

[GSF]

Interesting little john.

Jim, 628dirtrooster has a you tube video where he did the same thing. The bees there weren't aggressive. He put a queen in each deep either before or right after the shake. I can't even imagine how many pounds of bees he shook but it filled up every deep on the back of his truck and most of the deeps on the tarp. He just backed his truck under the limb and gave it a shake.

[little john]

Wombat gave me the clue in the 'Hive Drumming' thread - with his throw away line, "Works the same if you drop a box full of honey and it rolls down the hill 10 feet".

What I found interesting was that once the foragers had settled in the holding box I'd placed near their old hive entrance, they didn't show any inclination to move back into their old hive when the entrance was finally opened.  Those foragers clustered around the old hive entrance did move back in, but those which had opted for the holding box didn't/wouldn't.

I had planned on evicting them the next day, on the assumption that there'd be just a handful of bees in the holding box, but instead found several pounds of bees stuck onto those store combs like velcro.  So I left 'em where they were and added a frame of brood with a couple of swarm cells on.  Next inspection on Thursday, if it stops raining.
LJ

[BeeMaster2]

Interesting little john.

Jim, 628dirtrooster has a you tube video where he did the same thing. The bees there weren't aggressive. He put a queen in each deep either before or right after the shake. I can't even imagine how many pounds of bees he shook but it filled up every deep on the back of his truck and most of the deeps on the tarp. He just backed his truck under the limb and gave it a shake.

I saw that video. It was impressive. Luckily he had a lot of queens to add to each box if I remember correctly.
Jim

[tjc1]

Great idea - I'm going to visit local cranberry bogs after the migratories leave.

[mtnb]

VeRRy VeRRy interesting. Thanks Jim