Monica King
  • Contact & Bee Removals
  • Meet the Bee Team!
  • Bee Prevention
  • Store
  • Calendar
  • Blog
  • Workshops / Classes
  • Consultations / Hive Maintence
  • Beekeeping
  • Recipes
  • Homestead Birds
  • Gardening & Orchard
  • Homestead Power & Heating
  • Skills
  • Beekeeping
  • Beneficial Plants
  • Arts & Crafts
  • Organizing Ideas
  • Wanted
  • Bio
  • Bee Removal Gallery
  • Hive Walk
  • Library
  • Foraging/Survival - Snake Processing Class
  • Craft Retreats
  • Products Donations
  • Butterflies, Moths, Caterpillars
  • Native Birds
  • Nuc Updates & Installation
  • Food Forest
  • Places to Visit
  • Block Walls
  • Gallery
  • Communication Equipment
  • Olive Trees
  • Equipment For Sale
  • Bee Removals 2025

Shed Floor Removal

9/25/2024

0 Comments

 
0 Comments

Faux Rock Waterfall Africanized Hive

10/20/2021

0 Comments

 
0 Comments

Swarm on the Ground

10/19/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
I found the queen. Nothing really looked wrong with her. Her wings were fine. But they whole group of them were starving. Must have taken too long to get to where they wanted to go. Either that or someone or something caused them to abscond from their hive. These lost bees are one of many that beekeeper's save on a daily basis.
0 Comments

Bugs in a Rug

5/21/2021

0 Comments

 
 
Many people ask what items I use during a removal. Here is the light, it is rechargeable and has the red light option for safety and containment.

​Removals, especially cut-outs, more importantly of Africanized bees, should be done only by those with years of beekeeping experience. 

​
Affiliate disclosure & links: The FTC requires bloggers to disclose whenever there is a financial interest or bias related to a recommendation or whenever a blogger’s opinion may be financially motivated in any way. More importantly, I have a desire to always be transparent and honest with readers and to disclose how I make money from this website. FTC also requires disclosure about any affiliate links. For disclosure purposes, assume that any link you click on is an affiliate link. This means that I will earn a small commission if you decide to purchase the product linked to. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
0 Comments

Bee Removal from a Seed Thresher

11/7/2020

1 Comment

 
1 Comment

Vitex Log Hive - Part 2

11/7/2020

0 Comments

 
0 Comments

DIY Bee Removal?

9/25/2020

0 Comments

 
​"Can I lure the bees out of my wall by placing an empty hive next to it?"

Odds are very slim, in fact you may possibly be better off playing the lottery! You have an established hive in your wall, building, garage, hollow tree, irrigation water line box, or other inconvenient for you location. A very good question is how to economically and ethically move the hive to a new home. Many people like to hope that by putting an empty "bait" or "lure" hive next to the entrance of the established hive will make the current bees want to pack up their belongings and move to this new, fancy, upgraded, luxury home you made just for them. Here is why I have never heard of this working:

An established hive has a combination of brood in various stages, stores of pollen and honey. The queen's pheromone is throughout the hive. There is so much work for them to do. From raising the young that is in various ages, caring for the temperature, cleaning and making more comb, storing pollen, turning nectar into honey, guarding the hive, and much more. They depend on each other working together to make the hive function and thrive acting pretty much as a single organism.

You can place an empty hive nearby and you will likely see bees going in and out of it. Are they moving in? Most likely, no. They are searching for resources as they will salvage wax or honey out of your hive to take back to their own. IF a colony does move in, it is likely a swarm from another location and you will then have two hives!


They only way to remove the hive from the inconvenient location is to gently transfer the brood comb and queen and scrape out any signs of wax. Then seal it up to prevent any other bees from moving in. Once a hive has made a home others will choose to live in the same spot after they are gone if given the opportunity.
0 Comments

Bee Removal Products

10/27/2019

0 Comments

 
Sometimes I have inquiries by other beekeepers that are doing removals as to what products I use that may make the job easier or safer. I will update this as I run across  photos showing these items in use. 

​
​​​Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
Picture

Save the Brood! Some like to wire but I go much faster using rubber bands. I use size 117.
Perfect size for deep frames and I double them when using mediums.

0 Comments

Late Season "Swarming"

8/14/2019

0 Comments

 
I wrote this last year and finally found my notebook, still applies! 

It is December 1st (2018) and still unseasonably warm. Temperatures reaching up to the low 80's by day and evenings getting a hair chilly in the mid 40's. So what are the bees doing? They are very active looking for nectar and pollen, however there are not many flowers available at this time of year. So the forage worker bees are expending energy and using their honey storage. If you are a hive managed by a beekeeper that may not be a problem for you. The beekeeper will make you up some sugar syrup and protein supplement patties to feed to you so keep you healthy and happy. Some beekeepers may even put out open feeders so you feel like you have foraged something and can return to the hive with a sense of accomplishment.

But what if you have no beekeeper to care for you? What happens in feral hives? Multiple late season removals that were newer colonies or that got a late start getting established that I have recently done have had little to no honey stores. It is a trait of the Africanized Hybrids (AHB) that if you run out you to try to find some to steal or look for a new location that may have something to forage. Usually, during times of dearth, it is the former rather than the later. AHB are good honey producers but horrible managers. AHB tend to have more aggressive traits than the European Honeybees and this includes towards other bees. They will find a thriving hive, fight the guard bees, overcome and dethrone the European queen and take it over. It is like an end of the world scenario for them so they kill and steal a new home with food storage versus starvation. Can't say I blame them.

Other reasons can also cause late season "swarming" such as heavy mite infestations. Mites have been known to cause a colony to leave their home. Ants or skunks or any other pesky critter continuously attacking a hive could cause them to get so annoyed that they leave. Unfavorable conditions such as partial exterminations, flooding, etc. that causes structural damages can also cause bees to abscond. 

During the late season fall or even dearth during summer this is what you are not seeing: an abundance of nectar flow causing an exploding population making the hive want to naturally split to reproduce another hive by the old queen leaving with a percentage of the bees (also known as swarming). I tend to call late season or bees that abscond during a dearth a "suicide swarm". Chances are extremely slim for these bees unless a beekeeper can get to them and is willing to put a large amount of resources into saving them.

Non-beekeepers don't care what the real terms are. All they know is that unwanted visitors are hanging in a ball somewhere to close for comfort. 

Picture
This "swarm" arrived under this home's rafters on Christmas day in 2019! 
0 Comments

Swarm Lure Box.....

7/3/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
Using old bee hive boxes and scrap wood we make swarm lure boxes to catch feral swarms in the area. Our hopes is that they will find our boxes more appealing than holes in banks of the washes so that we can easily remove them, relocate, and requeen with European genetics. To keep costs down I use old wax for scent and no frames. The swarm then free forms their comb which when I transfer into one of my boxes, I treat the same as doing a removal. The brood gets banded into frames. I missed checking this box and surprise! Three large sections of brood and some nice honey. 
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Categories

    All
    All In A Day
    Beekeeper Starter List
    Beekeeping Beginner
    Beekeeping - Beginner
    Beekeeping - Drone Mutant
    Beekeeping - Family
    Beekeeping - Feeding
    Beekeeping - History
    Beekeeping - Honey
    Beekeeping - Mites
    Beekeeping - Propolis
    Beekeeping - Queen Bees
    Beekeeping - Seasons
    Beekeeping - Tips
    Beekeeping - Usurpation
    Beekeeping - Wax
    Bee Prevention
    Bee Removals
    Chickens
    Cooking
    Dogs On Patrol
    Family Recipes
    Farm Cats
    Foraging
    Gardening
    Gift Ideas
    Guest Rooms
    Homestead Other Insects
    Homestead - Other Insects
    Horses
    How To.....
    Local
    NUC UPDATES
    Rattlesnakes

    Archives

    April 2025
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    September 2023
    August 2023
    January 2023
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    October 2021
    May 2021
    March 2021
    November 2020
    September 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    March 2020
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    May 2016

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly