What happens between the hive and the extractor

[Slowmodem]

I have tried fume board and bee escape.  The results for both were so-so.  I have thought about these commercial keeps with thousands of hives.  The pictures look like they just yank the supers off and put them on the truck.

My plan is to use the escape and maybe a fume board if there's still a lot of bees on the super.  But if there's still bees, I'll probably just take them to the shed and use a leaf blower.

My question is:  Are the bees in the honey supers baby bees or old bees?  If I blow them off the frames, can they find their way back to the hive?

[tbonekel]

That's a great question! I would venture to guess that if there is no brood, the that means no nurse bees so the bees would be older and would therefore be able to find their way back to the hive. But don't even young bees take orientation flights? I haven't had the pleasure of the harvest yet, but I will probably take each frame and brush bees off, then put the frame in another box with a lid. I don't have many hives and will have the luxury of time.

[LazyBkpr]

   I have always assumed the young bees remain in the hive caring for the "house work" and do the orientation flight when it comes time to start foraging.
   If they oriented early on I doubt you could keep any bees in a split you only moved 50 feet.  Hopefully one of the scholarly types can answer with more authority.

[Slowmodem]

That's a great question! I would venture to guess that if there is no brood, the that means no nurse bees so the bees would be older and would therefore be able to find their way back to the hive. But don't even young bees take orientation flights? I haven't had the pleasure of the harvest yet, but I will probably take each frame and brush bees off, then put the frame in another box with a lid. I don't have many hives and will have the luxury of time.

I've tried the brush thing.  Some of them come off, but they're very determined and don't want to give up that honey.  Many fly right back to it, so it's (for me at any rate) like fighting a losing battle.  But, YMMV.

[iddee]

My mileage varies.

I back my pickup up to the rear of the hive, set a super on the tailgate. Remove a frame, brush the bees into the hive, set the frame in the super. Cover with a towel. Repeat until done. Never had a problem.


PS. The commercial guys take the blower to the apiary, set the super on a framework, and blow the bees out toward the entrance. They also don't get them all.There are many bees carried back to the honey house, along with some frames with brood. The brood frames are collected in a hive body as the extracting is done, and the stragglers find it outside the honey house.Another hive is formed. Sometimes more than one.

[rcannon]

I used BeeQuick this weekend and was pleasantly surprised. In about 5 minutes, it had run almost every bee out of two deeps. I think I wound up with about half a dozen bees in the honey house ( garage ).

[Intheswamp]

I'm with rcannon, Greg.  Bee Quick works good for me and doesn't stink to high-heaven.  My fume board is a sheet of metal nailed to a wooden frame...it basically sits down on the hive like a telescoping top.  The outside of the fume board is painted flat black.  The bottom side of the metal has green felt glued to it so it kinda looks like a miniature pooltable.   I sit the board in the sun and let the black painted metal skin heat up good...then I spray the Bee Quick on the felt and set it on top of the hive.  The bees roar when I place it on, kind of like when that first puff of smoke hits them.  I leave it on for probably five minutes and there are very few bees in the super.

I've heard of people using just a sheet of carboard and spraying one side of it.

What has been your technique with the fume board?

Ed

[minz]

I do mine the way Idee said except I give them a good shake first. I get about 95% of the bees before I pick up the brush. If I ever get more than a dozen hives I may have to try that Bee quick stuff.

[riverbee]

greg, i use fisher's bee quick and fume boards. if you have a queen excluder on, take that off.  i saturate the fume boards, it says criss cross i think. i give it more.

i set it on and hit the top (metal) with a propane torch and heat it up.........i wait for a bit and peek in to see if every one was chased out, and if need be, hit the top again with the torch.  the supers are carried to the truck, stacked and covered with plywood tops that fit the boxes so bees can't get back in, anything will work to cover them. there will always be stray bees in the frames, i might repeat the process on the truck, from the top of the stack, usually not necessary or with 2 or 3 of us taking supers off, someone is checking and brushing them off the frames if i was impatient on chasing them out of there. this works really slick for me, i have a number of fume boards, and i just go down the hives, put them on, heat each fume board, it's pretty efficient. go back to the first one, take the super off, replace the fume board, hit with the torch, go to the next hive, repeat the process.

it sure beats using honey robber or bee go.......like to gas yourself with that stuff.....

[pistolpete]

I use triangle bee escapes.  I leave the escape on overnight.  Usually there are about a dozen bees per frame left  in the morning.  The exception is when there is brood in the supers, they won't abandon that.   I use a goose wing feather to flick the stragglers off the frames.  That takes about 1 minute/frame.  I put place them in a towel covered box as I go.   The goose feather seems to bother them a lot less than a brush.   

[apisbees]

If you are removing honey and the flow is still on you only need to set the supers on end and the bees will exit by themselves with out robbing. as soon as the bees sense that there are bees outside the hive they will stand at the entrance and extend their abdomen and fan to attract the bee back into the hive This allows the bees to find their way back into the hive. the super can be smoked and by banging the super most of the bees can be shook from the super. with a bee brush used to remove the last of the bees. Bee blowers work quite well and are fast at removing most of the bees.fume board chemicals use to be so disgusting of a smell that I quite using them and adopted other ways of removing the bees from supers so I have never bothered to use them again with the new chemicals. Also the customers of mine are asking what chemicals are used in / on the hive. Bee escapes do work well but they do require 2 trips to the hive pulling the supers to be extracted and then re-stacked back on top. Then a second trip to remover the supers. in a remote location you will require enough to of them to have one for every hive or you will end up making mutable trips to the out yard. Try to avoid bringing supers with brood in them back in to the honey house, the bees don't like to abandon this brood and if a hot room is used it will keep the bees incubated and the bees will keep on emerging from the brood.
Here is a video of 2 honey supers above a bee escape. and the remaining supers being removed by bounce and brush.

Here is a video of bee removal with a electric bee brush

[tbonekel]

Excellent information! Thanks!

[blueblood]

My mileage varies.

I back my pickup up to the rear of the hive, set a super on the tailgate. Remove a frame, brush the bees into the hive, set the frame in the super. Cover with a towel. Repeat until done. Never had a problem.

Exactly how I do it.  I gently, yet firmly tap a corner of the frame on the ground in front of the hive and then brush the bees off.  Put in an empty medium, cover and repeat.  The bees make it back in fine.

[Bamabww]

I do like riverbee and it works really well in the bee yard. Don't do what I done my first harvest.

I pulled one super off without waiting long enough to let the bee quick do it's job. When I got to the utility room, there were still several dozen bees left in the super, now located in my utility room. No problem, I thought, the fume cover was in the wheelbarrow so I just placed in on top of the super with it raised off the floor enough to let the ladies out. Yeah, duh, I didn't even think about carrying it back outside. An hour later I was still opening the storm door to let the ladies who were coming out of the super back outside.  It took forever before they all decided to go back home to the beeyard.

Lesson learned: the bee quick doesn't work so good in an air conditioned room, it does much, much better outside in direct sunlight or helping it along with a propane torch.

[Bakersdozen]

I have used a simple bee escape with great success.  That's the little bee escape that fits in the opening of the inner cover.  They cost about $3.00.  Their great if you only have a few hives and they are close by.  You will want to install them about a day in advance before you plan to pull the supers.  I have also used the wooden triangle escape boards with limited success.  The bees clogged the exits and resulted in a big mess and a bunch of dead bees and even more trapped bees.
Bee Go: What can I say?  There are just as effective products out that don't stink to high heaven. 
Iddee's method works effectively for me too.