# Anyone know how Bee Quick vs Bee Go



## YellowBee (Jan 22, 2008)

I have used Bee Go and am allergic to the smell, I become nausious and sick when I smell it. I also dislike the chemical aspects of the Bee Go it is very caustic. I have used brush and shaking but would like to use something better. Bee escapes are variable in results but will be using some of them this year. What does anyone think of Bee Quick vs Bee Go, the advantages or disadvantages of Bee Quick? Thanks for your comments, Cheers! Les


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## honeyman46408 (Feb 14, 2003)

Most people have good luck with BQ, I don`t and have been told I don`t know how to use it. At the end of this last season a friend of minne loaned me his blower to try and I will have my own blower this year and will probably do away with the fume boards.


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## xC0000005 (Nov 17, 2004)

I've used both. Bee Go isn't allowed near me, my equipment, my clothes, or even my property if I have a say now. 

If I spill Bee Quick my wife says "What is that delicious smell?" 
If I handle Bee Go my wife says "You stink. Go downstairs. Or outside. Outside."

Downside to Bee Quick - Bee Go was much more effective at driving the bees out of a stone column. I got a few hundred with bee quick. I got a monsterous clump with Bee Go. It's not rocket science - when someone opens Bee Go _I_ leave the area too. I can't blame the bees if they do.


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## YellowBee (Jan 22, 2008)

*Bee Go*

Thank you for the answers so far. I use to have to wear a paint mask the heavy commercial ones to use Bee Go. 
When you say a stone column, do you mean heavily burr combed or really packed supers? Do you use less or more of Bee Quick than Bee Go and I assume you use the same kind of fume boards. My son is going to help this year and so we are really expanding. When it was just me I could brush and shake a few hundred frames, but with the increase it would just be prohibitive time wise to attempt to shake and brush several thousand frames.
I have used bee blowers before and my only complaint is the bees get really upset. Even with adequate smoke the bees really boil out with a blower. I suppose if it comes down to it I will use them but I am hoping that the responses of using Bee Quick will be of such that it will work as the primary bee removal system. Thanks again! Les


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## Nick Noyes (Apr 28, 2005)

Beequick works it just takes longer than Bee Go and doesn't work as good in cool temps. Use more fume boards and it will work for you.


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## power napper (Apr 2, 2005)

YellowBee there have been several threads on the use of beequick, do a search and enjoy the reading.
We find it works best here on a warm sunny day using a painted black metal fume board. If the hive is really crowded it helps to place an empty super below the super that you are driving bees from. The smell is nice with bee quick.


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## xC0000005 (Nov 17, 2004)

YellowBee said:


> When you say a stone column, do you mean heavily burr combed or really packed supers?


By stone column, I mean a column of stone that had a hollow core (built as a decorative support for a porch front). The nice 9x9 hollow was quite attractive to a swarm. Bee Go drove the bees out like I was squirting toothpaste from a tube. It's just not worth the hassle.


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## MichaelW (Jun 1, 2005)

I used bee quick and three fume boards last year. It worked great.

It smells good until you drive an hour home with the fume boards in the back of the car. I won't be doing that again!


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## Jeffrey Todd (Mar 17, 2006)

Hi Les,

I agree with staying away from BeeGo for all of the above mentioned reasons. I have not tried BeeQuick so cannot say how effective it is. A third chemical option (but natural one, at least) is Bitter Almond oil (or extract) which hopefully is not as expensive as BeeQuick or BeeGo. 
I personally prefer to stay away from any chemical methods of removing honey, however benign they are purported to be. Bee escapes have always worked well for me and are cheap and reusable year after year and you can market your honey as not having used any chemicals or drugs in the production of it. If you do happen to have a few bees left over after using escapes, a blower will get rid of them easily. Many shop vacs have a blower function that is of sufficient strength to blow bees.

Jeffrey


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## bluegrass (Aug 30, 2006)

You could just PM Jim Fischer and ask why his bee Quick is better than Bee go


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## Grant (Jun 12, 2004)

I've used Bee Quick and I love it. When I ran out I went to the farm store, in the canning section, and found a large, cheap bottle of artificial almond extract and mixed it with tea tree oil. That also worked well.

I have used Bee-Go and the smell lingers on my clothes, in the supers, and when I pop the lid on a five-gallon bucket of honey, I swear I smell it again.

It was announced in Sacramento that there is a new product coming out with a chemical name of 2-Heptanone (not sure about that spelling). It was mentioned by Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman of the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center.

And didn't we have a wacko discussion somewhere here about using Pinesol on a fume board or was that on the other forum? Now that stuff gives me an allergic reaction! It reminds me of all the chores I had to do on a Saturday morning including cleaning around the toilet.

Maybe Bee-go ain't that bad after all.

Grant
Jackson, MO 

http://www.25hives.homestead.com


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## Grant (Jun 12, 2004)

Yes, I spelled it right. Then I went googling and found this:

"2-Heptanone was one of the metabolites of n-heptane found in the urine of employees exposed to heptane in shoe and tire factories."

Quoted from this web-site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2-Heptanone

No wonder it works on removing bees from supers!

Grant
Jackson, MO


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## Beaches' Bee-Haven Apiary (May 22, 2007)

We've used Bee-Quick and worked well, I can't compare it to anything else though... It's all I've used. Its smell is sweet and doesn't linger for too long.

-Nathanael


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## bluegrass (Aug 30, 2006)

Grant said:


> Yes, I spelled it right. Then I went googling and found this:
> 
> "2-Heptanone was one of the metabolites of n-heptane found in the urine of employees exposed to heptane in shoe and tire factories."
> 
> ...


I don't think I would be putting anything with 2-heptanone in it in my hives.
Here is the MSDS For it, pretty nasty stuff. You sure don't want to be exposing yourself to it even if it is harmless to the bees.
http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/h0670.htm


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## Grant (Jun 12, 2004)

I'm not necessarily promoting 2-Heptanone. Having used, and regretting using, Bee-go, when Gloria said there was something coming out that was better than Bee-go and didn't have the odor, I was quite interested.

She didn't go into any details, just mentioned it at the end of her talk. I had kind of forgotten about it until I was procrastinating on a Saturday night by visiting beesource.com. The comments made me shift back to my notes from Sacramento.

Thanks for the MSDS info!

Grant
Jackson, MO


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## bluegrass (Aug 30, 2006)

The FDA does have it listed as a food additive, under flavor additives to be used in the minumum amount required for desired effect.

So not only is it a toxin, but its "safe" to eat and will flavor our honey; Sounds like a great product


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## Dick Allen (Sep 4, 2004)

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v206/n4983/abs/206530a0.html


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## coondogger (May 30, 2007)

The Bee Quick has worked very well for me. One thing I've found, however, is that it's important to wait at least five full minutes before you remove the fume board.


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