My wife called...a swarm is moving into my home at this very moment

JurassicApiary · June 03, 2020, 07:01:19 PM

Well, isn?t this loaded with irony. We have the final part of our construction project on hold to install our skylights in our home atrium and my wife just called and said a swarm is moving in to our attic crawl space via the open skylight area! She said the swarm is arriving right now...and of course I?m at work!!! :(

As I?ve only done a removal of an established colony previously I have a question:

As they?re not just a resting swarm, but are actually taking up residence and moving in at this moment; and, since it is my own home and I have the luxury of time and deciding how to play this out, Is it better to cut them out immediately (e.g. tomorrow), or would it be if I let them settle in and build up a little comb first to get the queen laying and committed to prevent them from absconding when I home them in a hive?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts and suggestions.

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iddee · June 03, 2020, 09:38:42 PM

I would put them in a box today after work. Treat it as any swarm. Move it to the apiary and catch the queen if you can, otherwise trap her in with a queen excluder. Put them in on top of a frame of open brood if available.

JojoBeeBoy · June 03, 2020, 10:18:25 PM

You must have them trained pretty well if they are coming in the house. Hoped they wiped their feet.

Ben Framed · June 04, 2020, 01:07:39 AM

I support iddees idea, what did, or, are you going to do? Wishing you Good removing!

Acebird · June 04, 2020, 08:35:23 AM

Don't let them get established in the house. You will have problems in the future.

BeeMaster2 · June 04, 2020, 08:45:16 AM

Jurassic,
It depends where they are building the hive.
If it is in a spot that you can easily remove them, you can let them start building and remove them as soon as they have some capped brood.
If they are in a void that requires you to cut open a wall, I would smoke them out immediately. While they do not have any brood, you can smoke them out and vacuum them up and put them in a hive. Bee sure to build your smoker properly with lots of pine straw on top of the burning embers. Wet the last ball of pine straw so that there is no chance that it is throwing flames out of the top. You can also spray BeeQuick on top of the straw to help drive the bees out.
Jim Altmiller

Ben Framed · June 04, 2020, 10:14:19 AM

It seems when bees locate in a dwelling, even when removed, in the future other swarms will sometimes seek those same general locations. This kind of goes along with what Ace was saying. Once they arrive and start building comb, which is almost immediately, the imprint may already have been established? I do not know. I would make special efforts to make sure ALL cracks and crevices are tightly secured as this addition is completed.

Also be careful when spraying beequick. The way Jim described should be safe, but keep in mind, beeqiick is flammable.

JurassicApiary · June 04, 2020, 01:51:57 PM

Idee, BF, Ace, Jim, Jojo,

Thanks so much for your input. Upon reading Idee?s and BF?s initial response I acted quickly when I got home.

Backstory:
This is the same area (atrium) where bees took up residence last year but on the opposite side of the room (I sealed up the entrance from the last time). They were making home in a completely new area of the crawl space over a different room. The skylights were supposed to have been installed already allowing us to finish up putting sheet rock on the walls and what not, however due to the Covid outbreak in March, our installation got put on hold, so everything is unfinished and just waiting and the bees had an opportunity. That turned out to be a blessing in this case allowing me to pull away the plywood with ease to access the swarm.

Yesterday:
After getting home I crawled through the crawlspace from one access and determined that the bulk of the swarm was in an adjoining exterior wallwith just a small amount of bees bleeding over into the area where I was currently. I went up in my attic to verify they weren?t climbing and making home in there. Once verified they weren?t in my attic, I pried it away a small corner of the ply that was accessible through the large hole you can see in the photos (above the work area) and was able to verify their location. If that point since this was at home, I had the luxury of setting up a small scaffold to work on. Boy was that nice!

I pried away the section of plywood and found beautiful bunch of docile bees. Searched and searched while slowly vacuuming them, but I was never able to locate the queen. I?m about 95% sure I got her though as after I vacuumed them up, majority of the remaining bees descended upon the box screen on the vacuum and started fanning their Nasonov pheromone so I?m pretty sure she was in there. I sprayed the screen with a some syrup to keep them occupied until dark. After it got dark, I returned and placed an inner cover over the screen end of the box where the bees were congregated on the outside to keep them on there as I walked the box through my home and took them to the apiary for placement.

I placed the vacuum box on awaiting hive in my apiary with a QE installed below the brood box to keep the queen inside. I left the vacuum box on it with lid overnight and will retrieve that today. Will put an empty super on (I don?t have a short spacer) and give them some syrup this week to boost their start.

Jojo, that was a good laugh, thanks, haha

Thank you again everybody for your words of wisdom! A few photos of the removal...including one of the swarm arriving that my wife took. She sent me a video which was a lot better. Pictures don?t do swarms justice.

Matthew

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Ben Framed · June 04, 2020, 02:05:25 PM

Congratulations Mathew, sounds like you did everything right. I have noticed that when the queen is vacuumed, bees will begin to gather being tossed too and fro from the exhaust of the vacuum. I suppose the scent of the queen is begging to them at that point.

In my case, I have become more and more dependant on not only cut outs using the bee vac, but also in swarm removal, especially the hard to reach high up ones. With the easily reached ones, I have found taking my time I can sometime recover multiple queen if I take my time and watch closely, (when multiple queens exist), always having queen clips handy. Keep us updated of this hives progress.

Phillip

JurassicApiary · June 07, 2020, 12:56:04 PM

Thanks, Phillip.

I inspected the hive yesterday that I put the swarm into on Wednesday evening. Pulled the QE first in case it was a virgin queen and needed to mate. Confirmed the queen is present (yay!); They?re drawing three frames of comb and she?s already laying, so it definitely was a primary swarm with a mated queen.

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Ben Framed · June 07, 2020, 12:59:04 PM

Quote from: JurassicApiary on June 07, 2020, 12:56:04 PM
Thanks, Phillip.

I inspected the hive yesterday that I put the swarm into on Wednesday evening. Pulled the QE first in case it was a virgin queen and needed to mate. Confirmed the queen is present (yay!); They?re drawing three frames of comb and she?s already laying, so it definitely was a primary swarm with a mated queen.

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That is encouraging. It does not take them long to get to house keeping especially when the queen is a mated layer. They get right to it. lol