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| Entrance to hive is through a knothole. Yellow pollen sacs can be seen on the rear legs of a returning field worker. |
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| Inside the 2x6 wall there were four combs about 20" wide hanging down about 16". |
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| A hive lid was used to catch the comb as it was cut loose from the purline |
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| Cotton strings laid out under an empty frame ready to receive comb. |
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| After the comb is placed in the frame, the strings are tied. Note: There are two pieces of comb tied in this frame, capped brood on the left and honey on the right. The queen doesn't look like a good layer based on the shotgun pattern of many uncapped holes (empty cells) in the brood. |
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| The hive is placed on a temporary stand so the entrance is at the same height as the knothole. |
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| The same frame three weeks later. The bees have attached the comb to the frame. The strings can be removed. The egg laying pattern looks better as it is more filled in. |
Bees were in the wall of a building! I have captured swarms before, from an oak tree above my hives and from a road bank in the forest, but this was my first time removing an established colony from inside a wall.
An internet search yielded helpful suggestions like "call a professional", "too dangerous, could set the house on fire with the smoker". Some suggest using a wire cone trap to keep the field workers from returning, but that takes weeks and you loose the queen and rest of the colony. This sounds like a good method if the hive was inaccessible, say behind a brick wall.
Fortunately this building was constructed with vertical board and batton siding and the walls were uninsulated.
The removal was attempted on a warm sunny day when most of the field bees were out foraging. By removing three 1x4 battons and two 1x12 boards it was easy to gain access.
Steps involved:
Using a 3" wide stiff putty knife, although a hive tool probably would have worked as well, one comb at a time was cut loose from the 2x6 purline and allowed to drop into the hive lid. It wasn't necessary to cut the side loose - it was partially behind another piece of siding anyway. The top was cut from right to left. Just as the top was completely cut loose, it would break free from the side and drop into the lid. Using the lid as a tray, the comb was carried to the ground and cut to fit the frames.
Keep the comb oriented the same way (keep the top of the comb up) as the cells are constructed with an upward angle so the honey will stay in. The comb was wider and deeper than the frames so it needed to be cut several times. It usually took two frames to hold each comb.
Before each comb was cut loose from the hive, a frame was prepared to receive it by cutting 5 or 6 pieces of string to about 24" long and stretching out the strings under the frame. I worked over the hive body so that any bees that fell off the comb would drop into their new home.
The trickiest and most time consuming part was tying the strings tightly around the frame while wearing sticky gloves.
It was a warm, sunny day, about 85 degrees. The comb was quite soft and broke easily but the strings were enough to hold it in place as the frame was carfully picked up and slipped into the hive. The bees should attach the comb to the frames and chew up the strings (this is why natural fiber string like cotton was used). A later examination of the hive revealed that the comb was attached (see last picture).
A few small pieces of comb full of honey were left. They could have been place on a queen excluder and set on top the hive in another super. Instead, they were left near the hive so the bees could clean them out. By the second morning after the removal, the comb was picked clean.
The first morning after the removal a grapefruit size cluster of bees had gathered in the top right corner of the open wall. By the second morning the cluster was only the size of a walnut.
Note: This was real easy, but if there had been horizontal siding like ship lap, 4x8 plywood siding like T-111, or brick, it would have been a lot more work, if not impossible.
A bee suit was worn and work proceeded slowly and deliberately. It was probably beginner's luck, but the colony was removed without any stings.