Not all pest control is about killing

[peeps_76 17]

great read thanks for that! find these kind of things interesting!

 

top marks for the extra effort!#

 

regards P

[Outofnowhere 93]

Probably a dumb question but how does the bee vac work???

[John Keswick 119]

Probably a dumb question but how does the bee vac work???

 

Errr, it hoovers the bees up

 

Its basicly a box within a box, plenty of ventilation holes on the inner box.

Plug a vacuum cleaner into the outer box and use the smooth bore pipe to suck the bees up.

[Outofnowhere 93]

Probably a dumb question but how does the bee vac work???

 

Errr, it hoovers the bees up

 

Its basicly a box within a box, plenty of ventilation holes on the inner box.

Plug a vacuum cleaner into the outer box and use the smooth bore pipe to suck the bees up.

 

Now I understand.

 

[John Keswick 119]

This colony is now well underway to building up into something productive and also nice to deal with.

Took a quick look at them yesterday and they are doing very well

 

 

 

[WILF 51,356]

Cracking topic John, nice one.

[iamduvern 62]

That third pic looks to be very good brood comb? How stable does the comb become in the new frame or do you get rid of it once they draw on new foundation?

[John Keswick 119]

That third pic looks to be very good brood comb? How stable does the comb become in the new frame or do you get rid of it once they draw on new foundation?

 

Well, thats an interesting question actually. Common sense would say get them all onto fresh foundation which is wire reinforced as soon as possible.

But after some interesting reading i am doing a mini experiment with this lot. The comb size on foundation is drawn at about 5.4 mm which is larger than the bees want to draw it. They prefer a cell size of about 4.7 mm which although may produce slightly smaller bees, the thinking is that it is a tighter fit in the comb for larvae just before capping, which means that varroa mites find it harder to get into the cells.

They fix the comb pretty securely to the frames, so as long as care is taken when handling it shouldnt be a problem. So two colonies this year i am starting off with staggered frames of foundation and empty frames, then i will see what happens. If all goes to plan i may go empty frames for brood areas completley.