# Wild honey bee hive



## RiodeLobo (Oct 11, 2010)

Hello and Welcome.

Some thoughts. You would want to at least get any honey out of the hive, as well as most of the bees, before you seal up the entrance, as it will ferment and can cause problems. 

To accomplish this you do what is called a trap out, and once you get the bees out of the current hive and into a new home you need to let them rob out the old hive of all the honey and move it into the new one. I would not use any pesticides, unless all else fails. You will want help with this. 

You can search the forums for "trap out" and get a lot of information. 
You should contact a local bee keeping club, and they may be able to help.
There are bee keepers who will remove bees professionally (for a fee).

Good luck,


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## AmericasBeekeeper (Jan 24, 2010)

Welcome, I hope you find a beekeeper to help. That will be a lot of work for little reward.


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## Irontrader (Apr 1, 2011)

RiodeLobo said:


> Hello and Welcome.
> 
> Some thoughts. You would want to at least get any honey out of the hive, as well as most of the bees, before you seal up the entrance, as it will ferment and can cause problems.
> 
> Good luck,


You may have missed that the current hive is inside a chimney structure. I'm not going to tear apart a good chimney to get access to the hive.

I don't know what problems you're referring to if was sealed up.


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## Merlinspop (Nov 4, 2010)

Irontrader said:


> I don't know what problems you're referring to if was sealed up.


Eventually, comb will break and you will have honey spilled in there. No matter how well you seal it, ants and roaches will find it. The broken comb may (personal speculation here) find it's way to a place that could get hot enough to melt the wax. Then you'll have fuel dripping or pouring further down. I just don't know if I would be comfortable with some of the possible outcomes.


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## Irontrader (Apr 1, 2011)

Wouldn't using the trapout method encourage the bees to move their current honey into the the new hive box? It that happened then there wouldn't be honey left behind inside the chimney structure.

Besides once it is sealed up in theory there is no access to the inner part of the chimney unless there are other mortar holes I haven't found.

Not too worried about roaches as I've never seen one in our area in all the years I've here.


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## cg3 (Jan 16, 2011)

Might be time to get your chimney inspected


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## G3farms (Jun 13, 2009)

The bees do not carry honey out of the hive to put it into another hive just because it is store bought, they are happy just where they are.

A trap out uses a cone made of hardware cloth shaped into a funnel (think of a minnow trap) with a small hole just big enough for two drones to be able to exit. Once the bees leave the hive, via the trap OUT cone, they can not get back in. Since they were leaving to go forage for nectar and pollen they are leaving empty handed. A bait hive is set up next to the cone and baited with brood which includes eggs. The returning bees will now go into the bait hive to cover (keep warm and feed) the brood and will sense they are queenless and draw out a queen cell to raise a new queen. After several weeks the original hive will start to dwindle down and they will abscond (leave) for a better place to live. When you don't see any bees exiting out of the cone anymore then the funnel can be removed and now the bees in the bait hive will rob out the honey stores in the original hive. The only thing that will be left in the original hive location will be the wax comb. Now seal the holes up so that another swarm can't move in.

This could take up to two months to accomplish this.


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