Tearing down the House

CC and I went to Victoria, VA and helped a Beegroup member tear out a wall to relocate a hive of bees to his boxes. None of us had ever done this before. The beekeeper friend was new at beekeeping, and I have only read, and watched Que and Harry take a hive out of a trunk. I'll post pictures when I figure out how to download them from Gwin's camera.

We got really sticky, and harvested at least 60+ pounds of honey (In the comb it filled two five gallon buckets). We used file folder sized rubber bands to hold the brood in empty frames, and got 8 frames of brood. Unfortunately we didn't find the queen, so we can only hope we got her. We left the hive in the window for the bees to go inside, and hope that the queen is there to lure them. If not, they have plenty of eggs to raise another. They had drawn comb from the outside wall toward the inside wall in one section, and in the other section, parallel to the outside wall. They must have been there for a year, maybe more, though there were no signs of wax moths. What a mess we left for the bees to clean up.

The hive was located under a window between the framing that supported the window. They were out of room to expand, and probably swarmed this Spring. Considering the disruption we caused, they were very well behaved. Thank goodness CC went with me, because his young back could tolerate the work. I'm pooped. After this CC could do it alone, and maybe do better without so many folks interfering.