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| A student from MSU called me saying there was a large nest of wasps in her house and one can reach it. After seeing her picture, I told her it was honey bees, but if she really wanted to get rid of them, I could help. I thought it was about 6 ft from the ground and it would be easy since the nest was exposed. All my students decided to join the adventure and learn something about bee removal. Sept 5, 2002. 6:30 pm. Viewed: 2923 times. |
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| A closeup of the bee nest. It looked like there would be a good 30,000 workers there (but in the end, my estimate would be about 20,000 max). Viewed: 3248 times. |
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| A bit of smoke and bees retreated between the combs. 6:38 pm Viewed: 2950 times. |
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| I had three students (who were taking my bee course) who volunteered with me: Emily Jackson, William (Nate) Sneller and Bartek Majewski. I modified a nuc box so that bees can be trapped inside when hooked up to a vacuum. The bees are actually located on the 2nd story and we had to stay on a roof, and even then, the best is about 10 ft from us. Viewed: 2798 times. |
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| We took turns to be the 'bee-vaker' because hands (and neck!) got tired easily. Notice the long handle we put to guide the hose because it is simply too far for the soft vacuum hose to reach the bees. 6:42 pm Viewed: 2422 times. |
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| And more vacuuming. 6:50 pm Viewed: 1865 times. |
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| By now we figured we had 80% bees trapped inside the box. 6:54 pm Viewed: 2411 times. |
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| Nate is brave! Even though he is alergic to bee stings, he still volunteered to be on the roof to cut the combs off so bees would not return the next day. 7:07 pm Viewed: 2318 times. |
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| With half of the combs gone. 7:27 pm. Viewed: 2288 times. |
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| We kept vacuuming the bees off while Nate was sitting above cutting combs. I would be scared in his position because the roof was not flat and his center of gravity was such that he could easily fall...17:30 pm* Viewed: 2622 times. |
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Album: Beekeeping 
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