sunday afternoon: present from James: wooden Nuc box

This afternoon James from the backward beekeepers came to my house to drop of some stuff and he gave me a very nice and practical gift.
He had built a wooden Nuc bee box, that holds 5 frames.
Painted and detailed till perfection including enough ventilation for southern california weather:

The chickens came to check it out, it looks that good ! ;-)

I helped James to catch a swarm to put in his Top Bar Hive.

The girls are going crazy in his backyard:

He also made a nice time lapse video of the bees going in and out the hive over a day:

youtube video


Thanks James!!

clean honey

The honey I am selling has been tested for 171 different kind of chemicals and _NONE_ was found

LINK

sunday afternoon: swarm capture simi valley

My wife joined me on this one for her first swarm catch.
They had been hanging from a grapefruit tree for nearly 2 weeks and the owner didn't want to kill them but also didn't want them to stay (small kids etc)

We didn't take any pictures upfront, so this was taken after we had shaken the majority in the box:

All the bees that were flying around seemed to be attracted to the box on the ladder, a sure sign the queen must be in the box. Only a handful had to be left behind.

Sunday morning: Moving hives

Sunday morning we moved some hives (including the swarm captured on friday evening) to a new place. A magnificent 2000 acre land in the middle of nowhere, used for cattle farming.
No fields that can be sprayed in a 5 mile radius!



On our way to the property


The hives in their new environment. I left the straps on, since there are (curious) cows around and even bears have been spotted (years ago).
Will move more hives to this location next weeks

saturday: trapout

I tried a trap out this Saturday.
I first sat on the roof, and observed how/where the bees were going in and out of the hive.
I found 3 openings, 2 of them I was able to close fairly easy. Hole number 3 was suddenly the main entrance/exit. I installed a reverse funnel and put a Nuc box near the old entry point of the hive.

Then I waited. Bees kept coming out, but there was no "pile-up" of bees returning to get back into the hive. I climbed of the ladder and saw why:

Underneath the eave there was big crack along the chimney where the bees were returning to their hive.

I showed the homeowner that this gap was so large, and probably had other wholes leading to the same cavity, that I gave up this fight. I am not a general constructor.
Even though i didn't want to charge anything (no cure no pay) i was tipped generously by the home owner.

Friday: swarm catch & simple cutout

Someone called me on friday about a swarm dat had moved into a building where he has his office.

He took some pictures from inside his office:

When I arrived, some people had started a bbq and try to scare the bees away with warmth and smoke. They had also used a fire extinguisher on them.
But they were still there. So i broke down the wall and this was a *huge* swarm.
I filled up over half of my Nuc box with it. So I went back and transferred them to a wooden box.
Since there was a huge cluster of bees in a place where I couldn't get to them, I left the box there to be picked up on Saturday.

After that I went to Ventura to the home of a fire fighter who had bees in a cabinet on his porch. No Photo's though.
It was the fastest cutout ever with just 3 layers of comb, and 30 minutes later I was going home again. Arrived 10pm and made dinner.. (this is supposed to be a hobby ;-) )

When I returned on Saturday evening around 8pm to pick up the swarm catch, there was an enormous beard of bees on the front/side of the box. So I used a spare Nuc box to sweep the extra bees in, and locked them up.

Sunday morning we moved the bees to another location.
Will make a separate posting about that

Bees in a chimney in camarillo

Another issue of bees in a chimney.
When I arrived they had left already, but a few were still around in the house.
The owner had used killing spray to defend herself.
I left because there wasn't much I could do.
When she called again a few hours later, about 20 or so were in the fireplace behind the glass windows.
The owner thought these were a lot of bees :-)
I started my smoker, put it in the fireplace and the bees left.
I vacuumed up all the bees that were still in the house, dead or alive, and placed a piece of hardware cloth on top of the chimney to prevent them from ever scouting things out again:

Small detail: I am afraid of heights ;-)