Trap-out in a "swiss cheese" house

[oblib]

Around noon today a city power worker stops by to tell me "the guys" would be thankfull if i would go over to an abandoned house in town and trap out the hive that is living there. As I'm a contractor and the electical guys are all good guys and work with me when I need it I tell them so and that I'll look at it and see if I can. Of course what I'm really thinking is COOL MORE FREE BEES.

I get over there about five and see two entrances and at least thirty feet of cracks that I'm pretty sure they can use to get back into the hive. I also see a ton of forgagers coming and going like its going to be 50 below tomorrow and they need to stock the hive now. So I climb up on the porch roof and avoiding the holes is said roof I seal one entrance and use up a tube of caulk sealing cracks then hang the cone. Instantly I'm in a bee furball  I mean holy heck, within one minute there is two pounds of bees trying to get back in the hive. Within 3 minutes they are spreading out all over the wall ( a good ten by ten area) trying to find a way back in. I get my box hung and think I'm golden.

Then I notice a line marching to the west. I look closer and its a line of bees 5 foot long with one bee fanning about every six to eight inches. At the end of the line is a crack I missed. Caulk it and oh look another line to the east. Caulk it. Oh crap another to the west and one going staight up.  This goes on for at least an hour. Bees find a hole or crack, I caulk it up. Three tubes of caulk and I'm out so I now I have my shirt off and cutting it into strips with my hive tool because I brought no knife , shoving them in with the hive tool and moving on to the next. I hear talking behind me and see I now have an audiance of the neighbor woman who want to know what kind of bugs are they. Good time for a break so we talk bees for ten minutes then back to plugging cracks with shirt strips and holes with screwed on pieces of plywood.

Finally about eight I think I got all the entrances closed and check on the box. YEA there are 15 bees on the porch fanning and bees are running into the box steady. Stay another half hour until it was to dark to be safe getting down and I'm still pretty sure I got all the holes/cracks sealed. I will check on them in the morning to be sure.

[CVBees]

So much for free.  Good Luck Oblib looks like you might need it.  80)

[oblib]

Went to check for leaks this morning and the owner was there. Seems he going to tear the house down and if I want them I need to cut them out as the house won't be there long enough for the trap out. The remark i liked the best was " There is no amount of damage you can do to the house that matters, do what you need to do."

7 1/2 hours later I finally have all the comb out. They were between the first and second floor. When I could no longer reach from the outside and had still not got to the back of the colony I went in and started cutting the floor up. They were in two different floor joist spaces. The first only went back about three feet, the other went back twelve.

No electricity so once I had all the brood comb hung, honey comb in a cooler, and crap comb in some sealed buckets, I started scooping the remaining bees up by the dustpan full and dumping them in a hive.

I didn't really pay attention to how many were in the box before I started the scooping but a dustpan has to hold 1 1/2 - 2 lbs and I scooped it 6 times. Plus the whole entire front of 3 mediums is covered solid 2in deep. I know its 2in because I can't even see my cleats and they are 2in wide.

If I had to guess , when I left there were at least another 5k bees that I couldn't scoop. I should have brought what I had boxed up home but again I worked until it was too dark to see so I left them. Tomorrow afternoon I will go get those and leave a couple frames of brood and a couple boxes to see how many of those left behind I can get.

Going to end up with ten hrs in the removal but for somewhere between 5 and 7 packages worth of bees I think its worth it.

[D Coates]

Glad to see it turned out well.  Got any pictures?