Capturing bees from a bee tree

Cutting it small enough to load, but big enough to get all of the combs

No more than 15 minutes after unloading the car and after more than seven hours of driving, neighbor Mike called to tell dad there was a bee tree on the ground and the county highway department wanted someone to take the bees before they would move the tree from the road side. Without time to research techniques on the internet, dad and Mike loaded up their gear and went to investigate.

They took two shovels, a chainsaw, a sheet, a large plastic container, and their beekeeping protective gear. The hollow limb was busted open and the combs were collapsed upon one another. They worried that the queen may have been crushed in the fall, but with no money invested and nothing to lose, they decided to try to capture the bees anyway.

They scaffolded up under the elevated log with other limbs so that the log would not fall when it was cut loose. Dad guessed at where the tops of the combs was (to the right of the knot hole above), trying to get enough log without getting so much that it would be difficult to lift. The bees seemed to not notice the chainsaw working within inches of them and the log rested on the scaffold after being severed (as planned).

Dad picked up the entire log, placed it into the truck and then covered it with a sheet for the five mile ride home. This morning, dad went out to the log and cut loose the combs and moved the bees into the large container by thumping the log into it and making the bees all shoot out the bottom of the hollow log. He put the lid on the container, took it down to the hive, and poured them into the vacant half of the top bar hive. As of this evening, the bees seemed to be doing well. We won't know if the queen is alive and present for a few weeks. Dad isn't experienced enough to spot the queen in a cluster of 100,000 bees like real beekeepers can do. It will be quite a colony if the queen is alive. It has at least four times as many bees as our existing colony.

Dad was also able to harvest about a cup and a half of honey from the combs. The rest was too dirty and full of larvae since this is the time of the summer when the bees are feeding their young rather than storing up for winter.

The capped cells on these protruding combs suggest a lot of young un-emerged bees

Dad picks up the log containing thousands of bees

Putting the log onto the truck for the ride home