Bee Vacuum Tutorial

P. Michael Henderson

The bees are the best teachers and when I used my bee vacuum with a swarm, I had problems and learned a lesson.  My intention in building this bee vacuum is to make the transfer of the bees from the vacuum to a hive low-stress for the bees.  I had used another version of the bee vacuum with a cut-out, and in a cut-out you take the hive's comb and put it into frames in the hive you're transferring the bees into.  The bees migrate from the vacuum box to the hive box to care for the brood in the comb.

But shortly after I completed the bee vacuum version two I got a call to pick up a large swarm.  All went well, the swarm was large and docile.  I put the bee vacuum over a brood sized hive box and opened the bottom.  But when I checked them later, they had not migrated down to the brood box - they were making comb in the bee vacuum.  I then had to shake the bees out of the bee vacuum which caused them to be flying all around the new hive.

Unfortunately, the bees did not stay in the hive and I lost them - a sad loss - a large, docile group of bees.

So I went back to the bee vacuum and tried to figure out how I could modify it to force a swarm of bees to migrate into the brood box and out of the bee vacuum.

I decided that if the screened part of the bee vacuum was moveable, I could push that down and force the bees to migrate into the brood box.  So that's what I did.  Here's a view of the modified box from the top. 

I cut out the previous screened portion of the vacuum and put in two slats on the long sides about an inch from the top.  Then I built a frame that fits tightly inside the box but will slide up and down.

In regular bee vacuum operation, the moveable frame is held in place by four wooden toggles, one in each corner.  I also put some heavy twine in each corner long enough that the frame would be held at the bottom of the box when fully extended.  Here's a view into the inside of the box with the screened frame all the way down.

The two wooden cross pieces are to give me a handhold on the frame when I move it downward.  When moving it down, it's important to keep the frame level.  I first put two handhold blocks, one on each end of the screened frame but that took two hands to control.  The wooden cross pieces allows good control with just one hand.

And a view from the bottom showing that the screened frame stops just at the bottom of the box.

Another view of the bottom with the screened frame all the way down.

But when you have a large group of bees in the vacuum, you don't want to push the screened frame down all the way immediately.  The bees won't move that fast and you could wind up crushing some bees.  So I wanted to allow the "drop" in steps.  I did this by putting in some screws that the twine can be hooked on to keep the screened frame from going all the way down.  Here's a picture into the box with the twine wrapped around the outside screws.

The screened frame does not go all the way to the bottom of the box in this configuration.

In fact, it's about 2 1/4" from the bottom.

I put another step into the "drop", and that step allows the screened frame to move closer to the bottom of the box.

This one brings the top down to about 1 1/4" from the bottom.

So to use this with a swarm, I'd put the bee vacuum on a full sized brood box, with frames, and push the screened frame down to the first stop (the 2" stop).  I'd come back in a few hours and move it down one notch to the lower stop (the 1" stop).  A few hours later, I'd move it all the way to the bottom, forcing the bees onto the frames in the brood box.

I'd also put an excluder below the brood box so that the queen could not get out of the brood box.  As long as she's in the box, the rest of the bees will stay.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

Some of the bees I captured were in cable TV boxes in the ground.  When I vacuumed the bees, I got a fair amount of dirt and some of that dirt lodged in the slide that closes off the hose port.  I rounded off the end of the slide so that if trash was in the groove I could still close the slide.  I also drilled a hole under the end of the slide to allow trash to fall out.

Here's a picture of the slide with the rounded end.

And a hole drilled in the bottom of the frame for the slide to attempt to let the trash fall out.  I think it's too small, however.

 

 

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