Honeybee Rescue

Someone had honeybees in their playhouse and didn't want to exterminate them. Trent to the rescue! Here is some documentation from the bees' relocation into a new hive in our backyard. 

Step 1. Build a hive with special enclosed frames in place of the normal top bars in our Warre hives. (You'll see why later.)

Step 2. Build a bee vacuum. Yes, it's what it sounds like. It hooks up to a normal vacuum hose and is very gentle for the bees. Believe it or not, he just found some plans online and did it himself. Here's what it looks like inside.

Step 3. The extraction. (Video to come. I just haven't swiped it off T's phone yet.) He cut the combs out of the playhouse, vacuumed up the bees, and brought them all home.

This is some of the honeycomb. He filled a separate container to the brim with brood comb (that's where the baby bees are, kind of like the "nursery" combs). 

Bee vac on the bottom, hive box on the top, with a cute little helper on the side.

Step 4. Suspend the cut combs in the frames with rubber bands. The bees then attach the new comb to the bars, chew off the bands, and carry them out of the hive.  

Step 5. Fill the hive boxes with the suspended combs.

A little disoriented baby bee who hatched from the brood comb on the way.

Full box! 

Step 5. Hive the bees! Luckily Trent was able to locate the queen, let her crawl onto his finger, and then guide her into the hive. After that, the rest of the bees were happy to follow.

We made them a little ramp up to the entrance with a pillowcase.

That's our established hive on the left. We added a 5th box this year!

There they go into their new house!