LIVE REMOVAL DEMO

[David McLeod]

Sept 10th I am doing a demonstration of live honeybee and wasp removals in Moultrie, GA. This is a small gathering of NWCOs at the shop of Kirk Dekalb, trapmaker. This started as a casual get together to purchase some traps and for Kirk to do a short demo of his wares and beaver trapping but has now morphed into something more. We have Robb Russell of Florida coming up to demonstrate live trapping of snakes, Norm Blackwell of Tennesee coming down to demonstrate predator trapping using both footholds and snares and your's truly demonstrating live bee removal using the bushkill bee vac and live/mechanical removal of wasps and hornets using a vac of my own design (loosely based on the bushkill system).
I would like to extend an invitation to any beeks or NWCOs who may want to attend.
I know this is the same date as the state beekeeping association meeting in McDonough but the date was not of my choosing. I hate that I will miss the meeting on Saturday, especially since it is just down the road from me, but I do intend on making it on Sunday.
If interested PM me for details. I will post more as it comes available.

[Robo]

David,

Hope someone is going to video tape it.

Quick question on your wasp vac.   Is it actually designed to kill the bees, or is it just a full suction bash them into the box type design.   I also have a smaller vac set-up I use for hornets that is a box in a box design that others use for honeybees, but I run it full suction.  It kills some of the bees, but there are still many alive that I have to kill when I'm done.   Would be nice to have one that takes care of that all in one shot.

rob....

[David McLeod]

Rob, mine is just a box. I de-engineered your bush kill and added just one element to it. I used as small a box as I could that would still fit the vac/blower motor on top. Made the box two piece, upper/motor unit w/screen and the lower the holding tank with screen insert between the two halves.
The de-engineering is a smaller interior to keep air velocity up, no bypass, using the smallest diameter hose that does not clog and then stepping down in size to a 10' stick of pvc to gain distance and the ability to work without ladders. Then the piece I added was a paint roller screen (expanded metal mesh) directly in line with the inlet in the box. I've yet to open a box of live ones.

[Robo]

Excellent, I like the idea of the paint roller screen.  Sounds like that chops them up nicely.