How do I get rid of bees within the homestead that keep on moving from one corner / tree to another?


Been around for like 5 years now!!!

Keeping bees in your homestead? How do you coexist?

I can almost certainly tell you that there are no bees experts here. We will not mislead you. My unqualified experience says you call the experts because the bees do not build their hive far from their last one so they can help you know where is safest to move the hive with the queen. We had the same problem in my primary school and they moved it to a tree that was slightly further and I think in the wind direction (no clue what this wind thing meant).

Hi Angelica. Your description of the bee activity in the vicinity of your homestead is vague.

My first assumption is that you keep seeing the same bees living in a certain corner of your premises. If this is the case, then you are dealing with an already established colony. Removing an established colony from its home (hive) is usually difficult as they have honey, brood and queen to protect. Under such circumstances if they feel threatened they will fight like mad insects. The only way to remove them without killing them (God would never forgive you if you did this) is buying a bee suit, a hive (0.04 cubic metre in volume) complete with frames or top bars, a bee smoker, a sharp knife, a container with a lid and a vacuum cleaner. The procedure is fairly simple:

Wear the suit and place a ladder to where the bees are residing. Light the smoker with wood chippings and wait till it starts to produce a thick good quality smoke. Smoke the entrance first sufficiently so that the bees near the entrance may retreat to the farthest location from the entrance.

Make a large opening (possibly removing some TNG or part ceiling or some timber walling on the bee entrance side. Note here at this stage that the bees are really mad now. Smoke them again to calm them down and they will retreat.

Once done, carefully cut the comb at the point of attachment making sure that you handle it carefully not to squeeze the larva, pupa, unemerged bees, and the honey in the comb cells and put them in the empty container and placing back the lid.

When this is done, smoke the bees again and switch on the vacuum cleaner and start sucking the bees into the dust container. When all the bees have been put into the cleaners dust container place the cleaner in a shade and be sure not to keep it for long without releasing the bees into their new home because the temperature in that dust container will rise sharply with the bees inside and it could kill the bees.

Return back the lumber (the TNG or the ceiling or the timber walling.

Next, take the combs from the container where you put them and attach/tie them vertically onto the top bars or frames using a soft string or rubber bands and put them into the hive. After that put the hive just next to the original home of the bees.

Take the vacuum cleaner and detach the dust container, and with the hive open pour the bees into it and put the remaining top bars or frames.
Do that carefully and make sure (I pray) that the queen goes right into the new home. Do not place back the hive top cover and keep the dust container open while you place it next to the hive, just in case there are bees which did not fall off into the hive or there are bees which will be returning from foraging.

Smoke the bees again to make them retreat to inside the new home. If the queen has gone into the hive the other bees that are outside the hive and in the dust container will join her. If the queen remained in the dust container, all the bees will go back to the container (sadly).

When all the bees enter the hive, you can now place the top cover and leave it there for three days. At the third day, at night, move the hive 4 feet to wards the direction where you want it to be eventually but maintain the same bee hive entrance direction. After another three days move it another four feet. This process should go on until you have reached the desired location within your premises.

If you do not want the bees anywhere near your homestead, then you should relocate the hive to within a radius of not less than 6 kilometres away. Anything less than that distance the bees will come back to you.

So far so good. Any question?

If you do not want the bees, I will take them to a distance of over 6kms for you (after you do that comprehensive process)

Thought so too!. what would happen if you moved the hive 4'6" each day?

Hehe. An expert appeared with a detailed methodology

Dala

@Baratang...when a swarm of bees colonize a hive or a new home, in the first three days the bees set their natural GPS to that point location and is not easily deleted from their brain. Take three scenarios:

First scenario...If you move the new home say 8 feet from the hive colonization location:

1. the bees that had left the hive for foraging before relocating the hive will not return to the hive. Instead, they will crowd around the original location of the hive and in the evening they will form a spherical ball on a tree branch or eve of a house (pretty close to where the hive had been placed). The second day after spending the night in the cold they will do the same thing. After that they will die out.

2. The bees which will be coming out of the hive in its new location will not go back to it. They will return to where the hive was placed before it was relocated. they will suffer the same consequences as outlined in (1) above.

Second scenario...If you move the new home to 4 feet away, the distance is pretty short and the bees will not have any trouble getting back to the hive as the bees' GPS is set at about four to five feet accuracy. The three days interval will not give the bees enough time to familiarise themselves with any new feature near the hive.

Third scenario...if you move the new home to more than 6 kilometres away from the original location, the bees will never find their way back to that location. Instead, they will reset their GPS upon the new location. Here we could help our sister Angelica further if she needs those bees but she does not want to be moving the hive after every three days.
@Angelica, after relocating the new home for your bees to more than 6 kilometres (to an apiarist friend) you could let it stay for about four weeks. After that and during the night you could get your hive back and place it to your desired place in your homestead. The bees will never trace the route back to where you had relocated them to immediately after colonising the hive.

Phew!!An interesting insect! Any question?