Suck it up (Honeybees) By xC0000005 in xC0000005's Diary Thu May 10, 2007 at 01:07:16 AM EST Tags: Bees, beekeeping, stinging insects, radioactive mutant canibals (all tags)
	A while ago I acquired a few spent 5 gallon water jugs. Not the glass, "drop me and I'll shred your foot" type. The cheap plastic ones you exchange to put in a water cooler which make sounds like an inner city kid tossed into a river. I had a different purpose for these though - I was building a bee vacuum.

A bee vacuum is a lot like a regular vacuum in that it's intended to pick up the bees. It's different from a regular vacuum in that it's not intended to turn them into paste. A bee vacuum makes picking up swarms that much easier. To make one you connect a vacuum source (like a shop-vac) to another box. You do NOT want the bees to encounter the spinning motor/blender of death. So the box you hook the shop vac too will have a screen mesh put over the vacuum port. The bees might get bounced off of the mesh, but they won't go down to the vacuum itself. If you are smart the box is bee proof, because you want the bees in it and if they can get out you are in for a treat (where said treat might swell and itch for a few days). The box is usually vented with screened holes. The point of the holes is to keep the bees in, but reduce the suction power of the vacuum until it is barely strong enough to pick up the bees. Ideally the box can be closed up with screen once you are done vacuuming. You want the box to be bee tight, but not air tight. Bees are like tiny furnaces - their wing muscles generate a LOT of heat. Bees sucked into an airtight box can cook themselves in the time it takes to drive home. Now, I built four of the vacuums, using mesh strainers from Ikea (Cheap Swedish CrapTM) to seal off the vacuum ports and five gallon water jugs for the bodies. The results are quite useful - suck the bees into the jug, take them home. Remove the bottom and dump them into a new home. So, how do they perform? I'm on the swarm list, but haven't gotten calls. A friend though is constantly inundated with calls. He filled up his equipment early in the season, and I gave him one of the vacuums for a "field test". In return he's handing me a few swarms. Last night he called and said he was on his way over with a small swarm (about 1.5 pounds of bees - around 3000 bees). It is likely an afterswarm - a swarm cast from a hive after the primary swarm has left. Centered around a virgin queen, Afterswarms are nature's way of laying a small gamble that might pay off big. If they can make a home, if the queen can successfully mate, if the small workforce can hold out long enough for a brood cycle, the afterswarm might produce a new colony. My friend arrived around 9:00 with a jug full of bees. It was cold enough to drive the bees into a cluster but it was clear that they were correctly fanning. A quick toss of the jug showed that we had only a dozen casualties. I thought about going down and putting them in a hive. Then reason kicked in. Bees navigate with the UV rays of the sun. They recognize the patterns in the sky, falling back to landmarks when a UV lock can't be acquired. At night, they are very, very defensive. A swarm is like a giant party where everyone is in a good mood, but if Galactus in a white suit interrupted your rave, you might go fantastic four on him. So the bees spent the night in the vacuum, in the shed. This morning I went down to install them, and was surprised to see that the inside of the bottle was covered in condensation. The jug was warm to the touch, nearly hot. A few minutes later the bees were dumped into a makeshift hive (I'm over what I planned to have this year) and were fanning at the entrance. A quick check this afternoon says they are drawing comb and cleaning house - good signs. So what will be the fate of this tiny colony to be? Well, if you believe the old adage: A swarm in may is worth a load of hay, A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon, A swarm in July isn't worth a fly. These are worth a load of hay. In reality the best hope is that they'll start a healthy brood cycle and then I'll combine them with one of the other colonies to boost it before the fireweed flow in the fall. The thing about swarms is that they are programmed to succeed, and I've seen baseball sized swarms that explode into three story colonies. We shall see. The bee vac is loaded into my van along with the swarm catch boxes and my spare veil/smoker/tools. One of the best uses of a bee vac is not for swarms (which are normally quite gentle). It is for performing cut outs. Cut outs are removing an established colony from someone's roof, wall, basement, shed. You use the vac to suck the bees off the comb, and cut out the comb. Brood comb gets strapped into frames with rubber bands. Honey comb gets taken home and eaten if it's fresh, fed back to the bees if it isn't. The fewer bees loose on the comb and in the air the easier the whole business is. I'll be using it on a colony that's a couple months old in the next few weeks. I'm looking forward to it.

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