I think that honey bees and canale + parapets were invented together. I mean seriously, there is no better house for a bee then in the dark, warm, dry empty space in the wall above a canale in flat roofed houses- aka the parapet in every house in Albuquerque. Also, there is no better entrance to the bee's perfect parapet house then when the roofing material starts pulling away from the side of the canales. It creates a bee-fabulous, 1/2 inch by 4 inch slit that bees LOVE as a perfect house entrance!
So, we are starting a trap out on the top of a 2 story apartment building in the student ghetto. Other beekeepers love to cut out the bees, but I personally enjoy THE TRAP. This means that we create a funnel with wire mesh where the bees can exit, but can't figure out with their tiny bee brains how to get back into the frayed mesh exit. I give them a beehive with brand new larvae and some sacrificial nurse bees to move into. The trapped out bees make a new queen with the larvae, the old queen forever stays in the wall with her dwindling honey supplies. It's quite sad, but works so beautifully well. Then, wax moths move in and eat out all the honey.
It takes awhile, sometimes 6 weeks or longer and you have to plug up the entrance tightly because other bees in the future will LOVE to move in to the perfect bee house... the canale and parapet.
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| James and some fancy fireman moves |
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| did we forget anything? |
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| The trap, the sacrificial nurse bees and larvae |
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| The troops found the trap exit |
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| Vertigo, 2 stories up. We had to screen the entrance on the outside of the canale |
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| Covered all the vents with mesh |
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