I was called to do a cut out which is something I don’t usually do but as long as the owner was willing to do the work opening up the home to gain access to the bees, I would get the bees and take them away.
The owner proceeded to remove trimming and then the panel and viola ..there was the bees and all their comb. Just huge! 13 combs, many of them about 5 feet long (later we found out that some were longer, hiding behind the panel above)
It took about 2.5 hours just to get to this point.
Now to remove the bees. A few days before, I had a “bee vac” I created using a “shop vac” that fits on top of a 5 gallon bucket. On he side of the 5 gallon bucket I had cut a hole and covered it with a screen. This hole is also used to control the amount of suction of the vacuum, allowing me to just barely pull the bees in – instead of slamming them into the bucket and making bee puree.
The owner held my smoker while I was using the bee vacuum to suck in bees one comb at a time working right to left. It was a difficult job. We were at the top of the ladder and the cut out was at an angle so that most of the cut out was actually above us. So anytime I was removing comb with honey, the honey would stream down on me, my head, the owner, the vacuum …the honey would stream down over everything. It was a stretch calling it honey …hardly any of it was capped (sad!), so it was mostly thin to thick nectar.
We took breaks every so often, when the smoker needed to be refilled. We continued this until I removed all comb that I could reach using the ladders we had. That took about 4 hours.
At the end of the first day, I had two full medium boxes of good comb full of brood or pollen. The size of the comb was perfect as far as the height of the comb was concerned. It fit right in. I just had to cut the length of the comb to the size of the frame.
I also had two good sized buckets of bees. The vacuum did a good job with no noticeable bee deaths – most of the damage to the bees came from the nozzle end of the hose where I would crush a bee from time to time with the nozzle. It was very difficult to be careful and delicate at the heights and angles I was working. That also means that I wasn’t able to find the queen and nicely put her somewhere safe. Often I was reaching far up above me with the hose and there’s good chance I damaged or killed the queen. I hope not – but it’s possible. If I did damaged her, I’ll have to re-queen.
That night I drove the bees a bit further than two miles and hived them.
They were dark bees and nicely gentle. Surprising since we popped open their home and started sucking them into a noisy vacuum.
The next day I was back and we had a longer ladder. Removed the panel above the one from yesterday, and then removed about 3-4 more pounds of bees and the rest of the comb. These bees I used to augment an existing hive with a newspaper combine.
It was a lot of hard work work and took a total of 7.5 to 8 hours from beginning to end. I haven’t decided if I’ll work another cut out ..but was very happy with the amount of bees – even if I didn’t get any usable honey.
It’s hard to appreciate it unless you see it on video: