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Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Here's the Bee Tree Challenge

OMG, I don't know if I can accomplish this. The bees are in a huge piece of tree on the back of a truck. You can see the open knothole that they are using for their entrance to the hive.



I wish there were a way to move this tree to my yard but it is way too big


There are thousands of bees in the tree.

I talked to Wally ("Iddee" on Beemaster and Beesource) and he said that they probably occupy anywhere from three to five feet of the tree. He was so helpful to talk me through how to determine where the hive is.

He said to cut about a firewood's length piece from the bottom of the tree and if there's solid wood there, to do the same thing again. When you reach the rotten wood, then you cut about 6" until you reach the comb. Once you reach the comb, you start at the other end of the tree and do the same thing. If Ed's guys are going to do this, I've promised to let them wear bee veils that I have!

My Blue Heron partner, Julia, borrowed a stethoscope and is going over the listen to the tree to see if she can locate the hive that way. I told her to take something to mark it with if she could determine where it is! located.

Here's a close-up of the bee's entry way.



And here I am optimistically putting a lure box beside the opening in hopes that the bees would just move in (fat chance!). And notice that this is in no way a pick-up truck but a big flat bed! They put a ladder by it so I could get into the back.

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7 comments:

  1. Wow! This is big league stuff! Good luck!!!

    Steven
    http://stevensbees.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Linda, why not use some of the repellant some people use on fume boards when they are clearing the supers of bees? You could drill a smallish hole into the cavity and push a small cloth or paper towel soaked with the stuff into the hole. If you had some kind of closed (but ventilated) box attached to the entrance, you could collect the bees as they came out. Presumably, the queen would want to escape the fumes too.

    I guess this could be risky. It would be hard to determine whether you had the queen or not. Maybe you could open the tree up a bit after the evacuation just to make sure?

    Best of luck! I look forward to reading about how things went.

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  3. This is getting more interesting by the post. I am amazed.

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  4. Anonymous2:47 PM

    Good grief Linda! I haven't visited your blog in a few days and in that time all kinds of exciting things have happened! I look forward to finding out about the tree hive.
    Much luck to you.
    Susan L.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh my goodness Linda! Good luck!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous8:37 PM

    I can't wait until I hit the big leagues!

    And I though that adding a second deep super was major leagues. Well, for me anyway!

    Keep us posted, Linda! GOOD STUFF!

    ReplyDelete

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