A Bee Hive Cut-out

Beekeepers Jim Metrailer, Jeremy Bemis, and I removed a colony of honey bees from the wall of a building and transferred the combs and bees into a Kenyan Top Bar Hive. Bees often find the empty space between the inner and outer walls of buildings as suitable cavities for nesting. Indeed, wall spaces are quite similar to cavities in hollow trees, the natural home of honey bees. We exposed the combs of the colony’s nest by removing the building’s weather boards as shown in today’s photo. The entrance into the bees’ hive, a small opening between the removed boards and the remaining boards on the right, was coated with propolis. This sticky substance, with antibacterial and antifungal properties, helps protect the hive from harmful pathogens. One can often identify a bee tree, a damaged tree with a hollow cavity housing a feral honey bee colony, by a dark, shiny propolis stain surrounding a knot hole where the bees enter the tree. The same shiny stain can also be found where bees enter the walls of a building. Honey bees varnish their hive with propolis, a substance that they gather from the gums and saps of trees. The layer of propolis is particularly evident on the rough-hewn weather boards. When we build bee hives, rough interior surfaces encourage the bees to build-up propolis on the wood to protect the hive. The somewhat pungent odor of propolis surely adds to each hive’s distinct odor.

When we cut the combs out of the wall of the building, we sorted the combs according to their use by the bees. Some held brood; some pollen and bee bread; some held stores of honey. Using strings, we tied the combs onto hive top bars and placed them in the new hive. The Top Bar Hives was arranged as a natural bee hive with the brood near the entrance surrounded by pollen and bee bread. Combs of stored honey were placed in the rear of the hive.

--Richard

Bee Transfer Continues

The transfer of feral bees from the tree to the modern Langstroth hive continues. Here is the plan for moving honey bees from a hollow tree to a modern bee hive: As bees leave the tree, they are unable to return to their nest, but they find an acceptable nest inches away in a modern bee hive holding a queen-right bee colony. When the transition started, the feral bees left their nest in the hollow catalpa tree as usual to forage. When the foragers returned, they found their entrance hole blocked by the one-way screen funnel. Desperate to get back to their nest, the foragers probed the area around the entrance hole until they found an alternative entrance around some broken tree bark. As long as bees can return to their feral nest in the hollow tree, the transfer is ineffective. Once I blocked the bees’ new entrance around the broken bark with window screen, duct tape, and roofing shingles, the transfer to the new hive progressed effectively. Beekeepers should return to the transfer site daily to observe the condition of the screen funnel and the bees’ activity. At night, skunks or raccoons may damage the funnel. During daylight hours, the beekeeper should see bees exiting the tree through the funnel. Darkening the funnel with duct tape encourages the bees to walk to the end of the funnel. A lack of bees may mean that the funnel is blocked with dead bees.

Every feral transfer attempt progresses differently, and at times corrective action is required to complete the bee transfer. After a week in place, I checked the Langstroth hive and found a large population of bees, plenty of capped brood, but no eggs or open brood. It appears that the bees killed the marked queen. This required me to bring in another colony of bees in a Langstroth hive body and combine the hives using a newspaper separator. After another week it appears the bees accepted this second queen.

--Richard

Retrieving Feral Bees

Often beekeepers are called upon to remove feral colonies of honey bees from cavities in hollow trees. In many cases the beekeeper can discuss with the property owner if it is necessary to move the bees at all. Those who decide to leave feral bees in place add to the pollination of the neighborhood as well as adding to the genetic diversity of the bees in the area. Sometimes safety is an issue, as when the feral colony’s flight path is close to human or pet paths. I was asked to remove a feral colony of honey bees from a hollow tree located adjacent to the parking area of a public office building. To accomplish the removal of the colony and the saving of the bees, I chose to use a one-way funnel arrangement. The same arrangement can be used to remove bees from the walls of a building.

In today’s photo, working at night, I am fashioning a cone-shaped screen funnel to cover the bees’ entry hole in the tree. It is important that the feral bee nest have a single entrance; the beekeeper must block any extra entrances. With the bees now able to leave their nest but not return, I will place a modern hive close to the funnel to receive the bees. The hive contains a queen-right bee colony with a small population. A good candidate colony for accepting the feral bees is a nucleus colony with a young, egg-laying queen. The transfer of bees works simply: The large number of bees in the tree overwhelms the guard bees in the receiving hive, and they move in. The transfer starts immediately upon placing the funnel, but takes from six to 12 weeks to complete. Eggs laid inside the structure emerge as adults in three weeks, and those bees fly from the tree in another three weeks. Eventually, the colony in the tree declines and perishes while the colony in the hive grows with the new queen.

--Richard

Buckwheat Vine in Bloom

The transfer of honey bees continues, as I attempt to move two colonies from the walls of a house into a pair of Langstroth bee hives. I prefer to make a transfer of feral bees from the walls of a house or from a hollow tree in the spring of the year. A bee hive containing a queen-right colony with a small population of bees is used to receive the feral bees. A good candidate for making a transfer into a modern bee hive will be a cavity with an entrance located close to the ground, so that a hive can be placed only inches from the feral colony. All entrances to the building or tree holding the feral colony must be closed with the exception on one. When blocking the extra entrances, it helps to use opaque materials to block the light. The beekeeper next builds a funnel out of screen wire to allow the feral bees to exit their cavity but prevent them from returning to their own nest. Use duct tape to darken the funnel which is pointed directly at the entrance to the Langstroth hive.

Once the funnel is in place, the transfer of begins quickly. All foraging bees are forced to find an alternate entrance when they return to the hive. Their numbers overwhelm the guard bees of a small colony, and guards don’t refuse entrance of bees carrying nectar or pollen. Pollen foragers, easily recognized by pollen baskets on their hind legs loaded with colorful pollen, reveal success of the colony transfer. As pollen supplies dwindle in the old location, more pollen foragers are recruited. The transfer site should be visited daily, as the bees will seek places to reenter the old nest. Feral bee cavities frequently hold small hive beetles, so passive traps should be placed in the Langstroth hive. The transfer will take from six to 12 weeks to accomplish. Today’s photo: buckwheat vine, a prolific nectar source in early summer.

--Richard