Traps R Us

Phew, just walked away from another successful trapout! This one was a classic trap... only about 15 feet up, so I had some quality time on a ladder over the last 3 months. You know, me and the bees, just 15 feet up in the air. I do wish there was a way to get the queen out of the wall in a trap because these bees were incredibly docile. I did provide the trap with babies to make a new queen from my Sally Sweets and I am just pleased as punch with the resulting hive.

 When I started the trap, the bees had only been in the wall for a few weeks. I initially thought that they were in the eave and came prepared to do a cutout. Thank goodness I started by making an inspection hole with a 3 inch hole saw rather than aggressively cutting first and discovering the bees weren't where I originally thought.

 I balanced the trap hive on a handy dandy ladder step. There wasn't a good place to tie the hive to on the roof. Usually I don't like to hang traps from ladders because they are too enticing for passerby. This house was in the farthest reaches of Rio Rancho in a brand new neighborhood without much foot traffic, so I chose to set the trap on a ladder.

 This is the night that we pulled the trap and moved it downtown to our backyard. It was raining cats and dogs and maybe a few bees and we were getting soaked from head to toe! We had to vacuum up a football sized clump of bees that never found the trap that I provided them to move into. You can see them in the picture and the very top of the overhang. The bees decided to cling together in a very depressing way and wait for fate to take them... or for a vacuum to suck them up! My bee vac is a very lightweight tupperwear. It's great for jobs like this where a heavy apparatus is dangerous and too hefty to maneuver on a latter without getting thrown off balance.

 The final touch was stuffing metal mesh screen into all the holes and then giving a nice clean bead of clear caulking. This prevents bees in the future from finding the delicious smells of beeswax and honey coming from the evicted bee's home and moving in.

I covered the 3 inch pilot hole with a round vent sold in any hardware store.

A successful trap and a lovely hive for the backyard.

Hive Pulley System

Good Morning

My fireman husband and I had a successful hive move yesterday morning. I mention the fireman part because we had to use some of his extensive training in figuring out how to get a 150 pound beehive off the roof of a 2 story apartment building. Kind of like rescuing a person from a burning building!

Anyway, I was very nervous about this move and envisioned one of us pitching off the side of the building or a crumpled up beehive at the base of stairwell. It didn't happen that way at all.

What did happen, was a very successful hive move using 2 sticks, a carabiner, a long length of rope in a stuff sack and oodles and oodles of ratchet straps.

Screened entrance

The night before the move, I cautiously climbed up the side of the apartment building late at night to seal up all the entrances using duct tape and screen. I used screen on the entrance so the bees don't suffocate overnight. By the way, the worst thing about moving hives is the late night shenanigans. I'm surprised I didn't end up with a cop wondering what the heck I was doing, veiled and on the roof of a apt building at 10 at night.

We came back the next morning and made a sling for the hive using oodles and oodles of ratchet straps. The problem with the style of hive I use is that the top bars have potential to slip back and forth during moves to let bees escape so we could only attach straps lengthwise.

We attached a rope to the hive and strung it back around a metal pipe sticking out of the top of the building as a safety and to help ease the weight.

We then made a pulley by clamping a long board between the parapets of the building and resting a board over this so the hive wouldn't drag down the side of the building, but would be free floating. My husband sat on the back end of the extended arm and worked the rope, while I send a prayer to the bee gods and pushed the hive over the edge of the building.

We pushed the hive underneath the clamped board

Don't Fall!

Anyway, surprisingly, I don't have pictures of the hive in the air, because we were busy keeping the hive from scraping, falling, twisting, etc! It was a successful move and I heart my husband's sweet fireman skills! The hive is now at Moore Family Farms in the South Valley and surrounded by alfalfa fields. Much better than stinky apartment roof living.

Sugar water at the farm until they find the nectar sources

Trapy Trappin

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.

James and some fancy fireman moves

did we forget anything?

The trap, the sacrificial nurse bees and larvae

The troops found the trap exit

Vertigo, 2 stories up. We had to screen the entrance on the outside of the canale

Covered all the vents with mesh

The doctor's in- Hive check

I just checked all the hives today and am laughing every time I come across a pink hole of honey in the midst of yellow honey in the honeycomb. I haven't been proven in my theory, but I think that this pink "nectar" the bees are collecting is the red fluid people fill hummingbird feeders with. Someone at the Fair this weekend was asking me how to keep bees away from her hummingbird feeder. She said the birds couldn't get close to the feeder without getting chased away. I didn't have any good suggestions except for telling her to try and change her point of view because now that she is feeding a different "pollinator" than she expected. Enjoy the bee show!

Anyway, the hives are looking great. I'm a little sad because I'm only going to check the hives one more time in October and then I will close the hives up with a kiss and a wish that they will survive to April. I guess I'm going to have to find another awesome hobby/ obsession to fill my time with. Ice climbing?

I did check on the South Broadway bee trapout and discovered that there was a wrench in the operation. A dead bee was blocking the only way out for the bees. Ack! I suspect it has been a few days since they were able to get out of the hive judging by the collection of dead bees at the base of trap funnel. Easy fix. I used a stick to pull out the dead bee and the rest of the bees came rushing out.

We can't get out!

Jessie, you're my hero! Let's get out of this trap

Also, I found this beautiful green beetle at the entrance to my hive "Japan". Bad idea dude. The bees had discovered the beetle and were stinging at it and trying to pull it away from the hive.

Special times trapping bees off South Broadway

Against all my good senses, I did a bee trapout today off of Broadway and Southern. Against my good senses, because it takes me a minimum of 5 trips to a trapout to rescue the bees, a ton of work, and usually I have to replace the queen once I have captured the hive (The old queen will never leave the original hive). This trapout business is a TON of work. I guess I have a soft spot for these pollinators and I'm also motivated because the neighborhood boys were harassing the hive and the neighbors were worried someone might get hurt. 

Anyway, here is one of the three entrances to the gnarled tree with a hive in it's hollowed out trunk:

Here is the trap I rigged up using a fine screen. The bees can crawl out of the hole at the tip, but can't figure out how to get back in:

 I used a thick layer of caulk to adhere the trap to the exit hole:

 Ta da. The trap is in place, held with thumb tacks.

 Here is my husband removing an old limb so we can put the hive in the crook of the tree. Did I mention it is our 8th wedding anniversary today? We know how to celebrate these special occasions... by sweating like pigs and having bees dive bomb us, while working 10 feet above the ground!

 Here is the main entrance to the hive that I completely sealed shut. I used a mesh fabric so that the bees can still maintain a good temperature inside the hive.

 The hive is in place with 1 full bar of very young brood, or baby bee larvae and as many nurse bees as were hanging onto the bar. I will check into this hive tomorrow to make sure the bees aren't finding any sneaky ways into the tree trunk.

Scored! A little memento I found at the base of the tree, to remind us of our special times trapping bees off South Broadway.

Honey Labels, Naughty Boys and Bee Rings, oh my

Check out the great logo Karen Hepburn designed for me and I had printed downtown (of course) at Albuquerque Downtown Printing. You know I'm a sucker for supporting downtown businesses. I have 1000 of these puppies. All I have to do is start checking hives and hopefully I can practice sticking these labels semi-straight on some full honey jars!

I'm also about to start a bee trapout on a tree off of Broadway this week. I'm sure this is way too late in the year for something like this but I think I am going to join the bees I pull from this mangled Siberian Elm to the Canale trapout in the heights I'm working on. The neighborhood boys have discovered the hive and I think these bees will be much happier at AMYO farms then getting sticks and flaming newspaper thrown at them for months. Naughty Boys!

Also, check out this dope ring my sister discovered in a store in Oklahoma City. I didn't buy it, but it's memory will live on forever in this blog....

Full report, canale trapout

I checked on the Height's canale trapout with a fantastic fellow beekeeper today and discovered it wasn't trapping a darned thing. We spent a good hour tightening all the seams so that the bees could get out and not back in. I should probably start experimenting with different adhesives besides exterior caulking because half the trap was hanging loose. It might not have been sticking well because of all the torrential rain we've had the last week pouring through the canale, or roof water spout.

I also discovered that the queen hadn't been released from her cage. She was still alive and kicking. Amazing, considering that I have had 5 queens die mysteriously on me in the last 2 weeks! I know, call me a wah-mbulance. I can't stop moaning about this!

To release the queen, we completely opened up the cage and the queen crawled right out into the hive. It's been 6 days and by now the bees have accepted their new queen. I could not say this the first day I installed her cage into the hives. The bees were trying to sting her to death through the metal mesh.

The bees started building comb onto the queen cage. If all goes well at this point, The bees will establish a hive in my trap box and eventually the hive inside the parapet, or roof wall won't be able to support itself.

Bee Rescue- A bee love affair with canales and parapets

I love New Mexico and it's great architecture... and so do bees! There is a style of building here in the Southwest where the houses have flat roofs, with a 2 foot parapet that surrounds the roof. Water escapes through a hole and a spout in the wall called canales. The older homes were made of adobe with no empty space in the walls, but newer homes are wood frame covered in stucco. The parapets don't need any insulation, so there is a huge empty space between the studs in the parapets that bees can get into through the canales and into the walls. Cutting through stucco is a misery to remove the bees. You have to cut through rock hard stucco and through wire mesh. You need diamond plated blades, and Mother Teresa's patience to endure hours of vibration to cut the bees out. 

This morning I started the process of removing bees from a canale in the heights and chose to try and trap the bees. My only concern is that it is getting close to winter (in bee world) and I didn't want to let the bees spend all their resources making their own queen when they should be pumping out honey reserves. I will be closing my hives end of September and it will take until the end of August for the new queen to start laying eggs and building an army of workers. These bees are dead in the water before I even lay the trap. I happened to have a spare queen on hand, so I decided to bait the hive with a comb of honey, a comb of brood and a caged queen. As soon as the I close the entrances to the old hive, the bees will have no choice but to move into the hive I have given them. They will then eat the sugar plug, and release their new queen bee within the next few days. She will then start laying eggs. 

Queen Cage with candy plug

Queen cage pushed into the comb

The trap and the new hive entrance

Parapets

Feeding the bees sugar water

Bee trappin'

On my way to work on Saturday a gentleman called about a swarm in front of his house. I couldn't get to it, because I had to go make some actual money and not feed my bee obsession. On Monday, the same gentleman called saying the bees had moved into his walls! Oh no!

Here is the handy trap that I built with a good beekeeping friend and my husband, who always goes unmentioned because it is just a given that he is there. 

Perched on the stilts is a mini top bar hive with a bar of 1-4 day old brood and some nurse bees. They are a lure for the bees that get out... but can't get back into the original hive. 

This elephant trunk is fine wire mesh rolled up like a sushi hand roll. The tip has a hole about the size of your finger and the mesh has been frayed at the ends so that the bees can get out, but can't figure out how to get back in. This has been glued to the stucco using caulk. 

The entrance to the hive is right by the exit hole of the trap so the bees that have been foraging for pollen and nectar have no other choice but to join the new hive on stilts. If all goes according to plan, the new bees will raise a new queen bee from the larvae that we provided. The new hive will stay for up to a month or whenever new bees stop leaving the wall. The old queen will unfortunately never leave the wall and she will be forever entombed behind the washer and dryer. Wax moths will eat all the comb and honey that remain in the wall. 

And I think we will be payed in tequila. Viva la bee fiesta!