Bee Escapes

[Denise]

Recently when we tried to evict the bees from the supers, we went with Porter bee escapes. The oval shaped one-way door type. The Barbarians had 5 supers to clear and the Romans had 3. After about a day and a half, we noticed a very LOUD buzzing from the hives. I mean really agitated coming from the supers. No one was leaving. At all. I knew there was something very wrong. They had to be stuck.
Sure enough, we broke everything down again and saw that no one could get through the darn one-way door. The poor things were having the equivalent of a bee nervous breakdown. Being stuck upstairs must have been really bad for them. I felt terrible. We just said forget it and took the "escapes" out and let them calm down. We tried again with the Bee Quick and were successful. Boy that stuff reeks of almonds. Whew. They don't care for it either and bugged out fast. I really didn't want to stink them out like that, but it did do the trick.

Has anyone else had trouble with the Porter bee escapes? Next year we will go with the triangle escape board.

[Michael Bush]

I've had nothing but trouble from porter bee escapes.  I'm amazed they still make them.  I've had very good luck with the triangular bee escapes from Brushy Mt.

The only time I've seen the triangular one fail is when there was some brood in the supers.

[John Quixote]

Denise,

This is a good thread about bee escapes:

http://beemaster.com/beebbs/viewtopic.php?t=6058