# What is the current consensus on best bee vac design?



## schmism (Feb 7, 2009)

I use a standard shopvac with a hose attached to a box i made.

has this bottom, 









fits a standard 10 frame hive body, then a top screen board, then a custom cover with 2 holes. one for the hose to the shop vac, one as a vacuum suction "valve".

I usually use a box of drawn foundation as it gives the bees more surface area to hold on to so they dont all get sucked to the top of the box up against the screen. 

I usually tape the seams between the boxes for a better vacuum seal.

I like this design because it does not require me to transfer the bees from the vac when im done. If i want i can simply pull the hoses out and use that box as a hive. usually i just pull the box off and set it on a regular bottom board and use a regular cover, but its not required in case the situation calls for it.


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## imthedude (Jan 28, 2013)

bumpity bump


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## Muzkrat (Apr 13, 2015)

Do you have a pic of the hose hookups that provide the suction ? I do not quite understand how this works. Thanks.



schmism said:


> I use a standard shopvac with a hose attached to a box i made.
> 
> has this bottom,
> 
> ...


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## liljake83 (Jul 2, 2013)

Bushkill


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## My-smokepole (Apr 14, 2008)

I like to get hose fitting Connections from the wood worker store for my vac. Instead of just drilling a hole.


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## mike17l (Jun 22, 2012)

liljake83 said:


> Bushkill


Second that. IMO, the design of the Bushkill is superior to every other design out there. I made my own Bushkill style vac. Works great!!


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## jlaudiofan (Feb 21, 2016)

Use a smooth hose for the part vacuuming up the bees, so they dont get stuck and clog up the hose. The ridges in shop vac hoses probably make for a rough ride. I use 1" clear tubing (found in the "RV Repair" area of home depot) so I can see the bees go down the tubing.


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## mike17l (Jun 22, 2012)

jlaudiofan said:


> Use a smooth hose for the part vacuuming up the bees, so they dont get stuck and clog up the hose. The ridges in shop vac hoses probably make for a rough ride. I use 1" clear tubing (found in the "RV Repair" area of home depot) so I can see the bees go down the tubing.


Use the largest diameter of hose you can. Pressure kills more bees than ridges in hose. Larger hoses allow less pressure. Smaller hoses allow more pressure.


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## jlaudiofan (Feb 21, 2016)

mike17l said:


> Use the largest diameter of hose you can. Pressure kills more bees than ridges in hose. Larger hoses allow less pressure. Smaller hoses allow more pressure.


There's no pressure, there is vacuum. I have a hole on my hive box (where they land in) with a chunk of wood i can rotate to adjust how much suction there is. Too much, bees die, too little, bees don't get sucked in.


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## Nabber86 (Apr 15, 2009)

mike17l said:


> Use the largest diameter of hose you can. Pressure kills more bees than ridges in hose. Larger hoses allow less pressure. Smaller hoses allow more pressure.



Large hose = low velocity air flow

Small hose = high velocity air flow

Velocity of the bees hitting ridges in the hose and the inside of the box is what kills them. Anyway you are right, use a large diameter hose.


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## mgolden (Oct 26, 2011)

mike17l said:


> Use the largest diameter of hose you can. Pressure kills more bees than ridges in hose. Larger hoses allow less pressure. Smaller hoses allow more pressure.


Build a damper into the design. It is an adjustable second inlet to the vacuum chamber. You can then adjust the suction so that you minimize harm to the bees.

My hose is 2 inch air seeder hose - smooth interior and 50% of area is clear. You can test suction with some small and light pine cones and adjust accordingly.









Damper is on top side. Merely a screened 3 1/2 hole with a 6 inch square piece of plex glass with a screw in one corner. Plexi glass can be rotated to vary the opening.

I have since upgraded my hose to that in the picture.


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## CoryM465 (Jan 26, 2016)

I'm a newbie so take this for what it's worth.

Homedepot sells a ~$20 vacuum that mounts onto the top of a 5 gallon bucket. That's what I use (as is with mods to the bucket) and it works great! It's just enough suction to pull in the bees and thus not enough to injure them. I've used it 5 times, (3 solely), and I successfully got the queen uninjured every time. And no dead bees that I ever found. They will sometimes get stuck in the hose. I just turn it off for a second to allow them to move a bit and keep going. Then blow out the hose when I'm dumping them in a hive.

You'll need 2 buckets. I drilled 3 - roughly 2" holes with #8 screened wrapped around it. Then you'll need to stick it in an unmolested bucketed during vacuuming operations for the vacuum to work.


I will say I far prefer using a vacuum over shaking a swarm off of a branch into a box. Significantly quicker and cleaner. Swarm removal from a branch I can reach from the ground takes all of 20 minutes.


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## jrgrtx (May 10, 2016)

Cory, let me make sure I understand on this set up because I have a swarm in the side of a house I'm going after this weekend and this looks extremely simple. So you have 2 buckets. One, you drill 3 - 2" holes around the sides and then wrap them in screen (as the pic shows). You then place that bucket inside of a clean, uncut bucket and attaché your shop vac on top. You're then ready to suck up the bees. That doesn't provide too much suction? Doesn't seem like you're regulating the suction any and all the other plans I've read say you need to regulate the suction to keep from killing the bees.


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## CoryM465 (Jan 26, 2016)

That's it exactly. I've read and seen the same things. However this is a very low power vacuum, so I haven't needed to regulate it.


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## Mr.Beeman (May 19, 2012)

Best design I've used so far. Smooth pool hose works quite well. Just by adding frames to the catch box hive body, you can vac swarms right into their forever hive. Add as many hive bodies as needed. I built these years ago and also have them in the five frame nuc size as well for smaller swarm captures.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

I built something like what Muskrat pictured. Mine has a vac motor built into it though. I had access to a very low price source of Hoover Port-A-Vacs. so I cannibalized one and used that motor in the box. Now the hoover has a huge motor for a vacuum, many vacuums would have a much smaller lighter motor but they are not as reliable. also the hoover motor can be rebuilt piece by piece if necessary. But I do like that my vac is one box I can grab. place a super on top of it and go to work. Pick up a cheap household vac from a garage sale and tear the motor out of it.


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