I was asked by a family friend to remove a beehive from his property, these are some photos I took early on:
http://imgur.com/a/1iYRZI've never attempted to remove one so big, and I made quite a number of mistakes by doing this. I tried to put most of the comb into the bee boxs I bought. This resulted in the boxs being quite overfull, they leaked with honey and many bees died because of so. I had to put another super on top to contain all the comb, which resulted in the beehive being overly large and heavy; I dropped them, twice, and all the comb I put in there misaligned, and now I'm unable to close the beehive, as none of the frames can sit straight, nor can I seal the bottom part of the hive as it came apart with it's deattachable base.
I've learned when doing bee hive removal jobs, that I need to take a bucket to store honey comb that I find, and another bucket to store wax comb that I find; the only comb that should be going into the super is brood(except maybe a bit of sticky honeycomb on top of the hivelid).
The first night I went there, I extracted all the comb. I didn't give myself nearly enough time (got there with 2 hours of day light left) and too many aggressive bees got into my suit, so I left the bees, exposed with a nucleus with brood in it next to them. I returned the next day, they entirely ignored the nucleus. I proceed to scoop the bees with an icecream container and beebrush, taking out bits of tiles to allow me to get at the bees that were running down the sides. My beesuit zipper starts to come undone. I try duct taping it up but for some reason my ducttape sucks and won't stick well. My smoker kept going out, I might have overpacked it, then the top got stuck, may have needed to be cleaned but I could not open it, was trying for minutes, getting very frustrated, and in my stressed state I bashed the head of the smoker to try and force it to open, which caused the head to break off, making it further difficult to smoke the bees.
The bees went down into the box, I couldn't easily get at them. I was scooping at them with a brush into an ice cream container, to put them into the box. As soon as I'd start scooping, they'd go down the sides. I'd put the hive box right up next to them, and they'd pay only little interest in it. I really could not tell where the queen was, I'm guessing she was running down the sides, and is still there. I was getting quite stung, was quite stressed and had enough, so I left, leaving behind about two fist full of bees, plus whatever was scattered amongst the tiles.
It was very difficult trying to get the double super beehive into the car, which wasnt sealed, had angry bees in it, was dripping in honey, had a bunch of bees hanging off the side and my wagon door kept on wanting to shut down on it's own. I return home, and went to take the bees out, but seeing the mangled box and all the angry bees flying around it, I just couldn't see a way in which I could actually pick that thing up and carry it, without dropping it and without getting stung multiple times, so I left it. It's still in my car, I want to just forget about this stressful incindent but I need to take it out.
The people with the bees will probably contact me as I left many bees behind. I don't know what to do with them. I want to tell them to just spray them with fly spray, but I don't know if the bees would attack them if they did so; would they? I don't know if I should offer to go down there, for the third time, to spray the bees myself (I haven't got a suit but I have a veil and the smoker sort of works). I'm not sure if the bees will fly elsewhere, having had their home ripped apart like that, but I feel there's a decent chance they will stay there (and they need to be removed).
I'm not sure what to do with the mangled hive, I feel there's a decent chance she's queenless. I feel that I shouldn't leave the comb in there, and that the comb I do want to leave in there, I should strap down with rubbered bands, meaning that I'll need to take everything out, and transition all bees and comb and reconstruct a new super for them to live in. I feel I should move the beehive that's in the car at night or in the early morning/dusk.
