old house full of bees!
old house full of bees!
I went to help a friend extract bees from an old house. They were in the front corner of the house in the wall. We pulled the boards off the house and man what a sight! The bees had comb front the top to the bottom between the studs and had started in the next cavity. We vacumed 3 3lb boxes of bees and it didn't even look like any were missing. The comb ran across the wall from stud to stud and it was 3 layers deep from the top to the bottom. We would hold up a frame and cut a section with brood the same size as the frame and rubberband it in. We got about 5 frames full. Then we cleaned out the rest of the comb and had 3 five gallon buckets full! I looked for the queen but could not find her. There were more bees left there than in the three hives I have all together! We left the hive up next to the wall on the porch and left. I can't wait to see what happens next! They should clean up and go into the hive body with the brood, but they could try to go back into the wall. To my surprise, I saw only 4 or 5 old queen cells, but there was old black comb down at the lowest spot and the owner of the house said he gassed them last summer. I think the bees cut the gas soaked comb loose and let it fall and then rebuilt. My friend got stung 3 times on the same ear! I got no stings. His ear was 3 times bigger than the other too!