It's been a busy weekend. pt 2

[Understudy]

Let's see what I can possibly do to be even more smelly.

Hmmmm. I know.

Bees in a concrete block wall.

Now this was the followup. There were some bees in the soffit at this house. It was not a bad cutout. You might remember it from here.
http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php?topic=12609.0

Well there was a second hive. it was in the concrete block wall. Now the homeowner orginally tried to remove the bees by cutting them out of the wall. The problem was he only cut one row of block cells. They were living in more than one row of cells.

Now the way to get any hive worked up is to use loud whinny power tools within 6 feet of hive. If Tim Allen grunts about it bees will get worked up about. Now a gas powered cut saw meets this qualification. It also kicks up a massive amount of dust.

Now cutting the block where the hive is with a loud power tool and creating a massive dust cloud just seems bad all around.

Sidenote.
I took an idea Michael Bush had mentioned once and combined it with some other knowledge I had on bees and came up with an idea on how to deal with an aggressive hive.  Often firemen will foam bees and do all the horrible things to deal with a person when under attack. My idea was that bees being cold blooded and not liking the rain will not attack during a rainstorm as much as they would in clear weather. A firehose makes for a great rainstorm if you simply point it up and let it rain down on you. I have used my house hose to help calm down a feeding freenzy but they really weren't in attack mode. At this cutout they were going to be angry. If this idea doesn't work pain will be the name of the game.

So what I did was I asked the homeowner to spray the hose toward me and the ceiling to keep the dust down from the cut saw. This was true. I told him this would also keep the bees calm. I wasn't sure but I would find out real quick.

Now you need a bit of a mental picture for this. I am in my jeans and tshirt with a cut saw going full blast on a block wall. And it is raining on me from the garden hose. Fortunatly there are no pictures of this because the two people involved were actually working and if there was a picture of this you would all be spitting up on your monitors and keyboards from laughing so hard. 

The results of my idea.
My idea worked. A little to well. The bees never got on me. Now the homeowner and credit to him wasn't sprayed with water.  He was holding the hose. He took about 8 stings. But he kept the hose on me the whole time. Now I took one break and here is why.

Mental note water in the air filter will cause a cut saw to stop working.

One airhose treatment later. The saw was back up and running. I finished the cut.

Once I finished the cut I removed the sections that could be removed with a chisel and prybar. Other sections, well they got the sledgehammer.

The comb basically was floor to ceiling.

Now while the water did keep the dust down on the outside. The inside wasn't quite so lucky. While it wasn't horrible the outer layer of comb had a thin layer of concrete dust. So I wasn't willing to pass that along to the home owner. I am not sure if I should feed it back to the bees or not but I guess that is a question for you guys.

So I took all the brood comb and put it in the frames. I had to vaccum the bees. I never even saw the queen.

So I spent the afternoon wet from the hose and cutting the comb out and vaccuming the bees.  The honey probably weighed closed to 60 lbs. The brood comb fit a medium box perfectly.

I took the bees and comb home. I combined them with the queenless hive. Took a shower and went and closed down the fair and struck the pbc beekeeper booth.

Pictures here.
http://www.brendhanhorne.com/coppermine_dir/thumbnails.php?album=132


Sincerely,
Brendhan

[Brian D. Bray]

Fantastic, Brendhan, you just have to write a book about bee removal technics.


Applause please.

[Frantz]

Yeah,,, Buddy! That was a great story and even better technic. The pics were great. I wish, Oh how I wish you had a shot of the homeowner showering you with the hose and you with the saw in hand going at it. Since I am in const and all. I think that I would have been tempted to use my trac hoe on the block wall. I have a komatsu (yellow and black) so the bees would have just thought I was the long fabled king bee and relaxed right??? I let you know how that works out if I ever get the chance to employ that technic..
Nice job,
F

[JP]

That was just sick!!! Thanks for sharing. wish there were pics of you getting sprayed down though. You gotta do what ya gotta do sometimes!


.......JP