# No bee vac at first made removal harder - but made save



## odfrank (May 13, 2002)

If you would have followed my suggestion a few years ago you would have gotten a Bushkill Vac. The bees would all be vac'ed directly into the vac hive with no dumping out of buckets, brood easily combined and you could take it all home on the first visit. And you would be using the proper 2 1/2" size hose. I got you to go from topbars to Langs, now take the next big leap.


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## PatBeek (Jan 13, 2012)

But you are presupposing that there's a problem with my method. What's wrong with me cutting all the comb out, spraying Honey B Gone and combining them on site? There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. You can't take the bees home until nightfall anyhow, otherwise you leave a crap load of of them on site. And besides, if it wasn't for the "Reunited" section of my videos, who would even want to watch them?


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## PatBeek (Jan 13, 2012)

.

Proper hose size? Look, I can't even hardly afford a shirt right now, but that's beside the point. No bees are dying in my bee vac.


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## PatBeek (Jan 13, 2012)

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And regarding top bar versus Langstroth in my removals, the reason I'm using mostly Langstroth now is because of customer demand. Both hives are equally as productive, useful and enjoyable. I'm just trying to keep above water financially.


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## Jtcmedic (Apr 7, 2017)

Good job pat. If it works and not broken don t fix it.


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## PatBeek (Jan 13, 2012)

Jtcmedic said:


> Good job pat. If it works and not broken don t fix it.




Hey, things could always be improved, I'm not denying that. I would love to have a hundred foot cherry picker, but I can't afford it right now. But just because someone doesn't have all the latest and greatest equipment, that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong, it's just different.


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## Charlie B (May 20, 2011)

Hey Pat, I’m like you with not a lot of money. I built my own Bushkill from discarded plywood and old window screen. It works great and it really does save you a lot of work with very few causalites. On the other end when you place the bees in your yard it saves time as well. The plans are online and they’re very simple to build.


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## TexasFreedom (Feb 25, 2016)

Pat,

Nice work, that colony was quite a challenge. I should hire you as a sales rep for my cordless bee vacuum! This is Tony from The Everything Bee Vacuum (see me in the vendor list). 

You ran into the same problems I had a few years back: Bee Vacuums require an outlet or a generator, and transferring bees issues, and noisy, and slow, and and! I solved all those problems.

I did a water meter small-colony cutout in 8 minutes the other day. On Thursday morning while mentoring a new BK (who wants to learn how to do cutouts), we did 2 water meter cutouts in 90 minutes... and that included a 30 minute drive from one to the other, fixing a split she had issues with, setting up her new cutout at her place, and lots of mentoring discussion.


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## Charlie B (May 20, 2011)

TexasFreedom said:


> This is Tony from The Everything Bee Vacuum (see me in the vendor list). Bee Vacuums require an outlet or a generator, and transferring bees issues, and noisy, and slow, and and! I solved all those problems.


It’s true that my Bushkill requires a generater or an outlet but that’s the only draw back.

The other problems you say you solved don’t exist:

Bee transferring problems?
Too slow?
Too noisy?

You also say on your website:

Tired of taking 10 minutes to assemble your beevac? (It actually takes less then a minute)
Tired of your strap slipping? (Never had that happen)
Tired of killing bees because you had too much pressure? (The Bushkill has a suction adjustment, never had that problem)
Tired of bees flying off when you put them in a hive? (The bees are already in the hive with a Bushkill)


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## TexasFreedom (Feb 25, 2016)

Charlie B said:


> It’s true that my Bushkill requires a generater or an outlet but that’s the only draw back.
> The other problems you say you solved don’t exist:
> Bee transferring problems?
> Too slow?
> ...


Charlie,
Don't get me wrong, the bushkill design is a solid design and serves its purpose. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have weaknesses. Let me explain my comments better first regarding problems:
Bee Transferring problems: There are multiple pieces to this. Everything from hose clogs to finally recombining your brood and the bees. If you are on a ladder with 20ft of hose and it clogs, then you're going up & down the ladder over and over. That's an issue and time consuming. I want to combine the bees and their brood at the cutout site to avoid chilled brood. With my vac, the 'open' time is tiny and usually less than 5 bees escape. With the bushkill, your first vacuum body with the removable screen, you are right that it's fairly escape-proof. But when you have the monster hive, or do more than one cutout, buying extra sets is expensive and bulky. With mine, it's easy, just swap containers and cap the full one... and no issues with heat or suffocation. And all of my bees are in one hive body when I get home, the bushkill has 2 bodies that will need to be separated later. These may not be huge issues, but they do add up. And the temperment of the bees and your local conditions make a difference. I deal with AHB here in Texas. The few seconds it takes to move a hive body full of bees onto another hive body with brood is enough time for one or two thousand bees to go airborne.

Too slow: I built my own bushkill vacuum a few years back, and I was proud of it and thought it worked fine. With the Bushkill, if you start with the pieces, it does take several minutes to haul it all out to where the colony is at. Get out the extension cord and stretch it out. Hook up the hoses. Test the vacuum pressure. Stack up the pieces of the vacuum & strap them together. Now picture trying to do all this needing it in an attic? That's a colony you'd probably pass on with a Bushkill. But just take your normal walk around the house into the back yard. Just getting it all back there is typically 3 trips. When you're sucking bees, and you want to turn up the vacuum pressure, down the ladder or crawl out from under the mobile home to kick it up a little, and repeat to turn it back down. Or just fight the clogged hose? Compare all that to one trip carrying my vacuum on your back, and you still have both hands free to carry other equipment. My experience is that it took 10-15 minutes to get my bushkill in and set up, and another 10-15 minutes to take it all down and loaded.

Too noisy: if you are working with an assistant, communications is reduced. I have hearing problems, and put a shopvac next to me and I'm not hearing anything anyone says. I haven't done a side-by-side sound level test, but my experience is that my vacuum has 5% of the noise level. I've also had a shopvac burn out doing a cutout, that was not fun.

I'm not going to address each of the 'Tired of' replies, this reply is already long enough (but I will if you'd like). I remember once the adjustment on my bushkill was hit by the hose & jacked up the vacuum. You may not have had one issue but had others not listed. Like dropping the hose while working on a ladder. Or with longer hose situations, all the clogging problems. Or wanting to kick up the vacuum for just a minute to suck up a large group and then kick it back down.

Charlie, I understand that using what I already own is far nicer than needing to spend hundreds to buy something new. But to say these issues don't happen isn't genuine. I'm not a full-time cutout expert but I've done quite a few removals. But rather than my opinion, I'll quote what one of my customers who does cutouts and removals professionally has said. In the first week he had it, he did 6 cutouts. He had used a bushkill-type vacuum design until he got mine. He said it cut his time per cutout nearly in half. I would call that 'being slow'. I've been meaning to get a letter from him telling what he thinks of it, I'll call him and ask for it. I can tell you that I've not had one person who had a Bushkill-type vacuum prefer it after using my vacuum only once.

It's not just setup/teardown time. It's the portability, being cordless, easy speed adjustments, high capacity, lightweight, short hose (clog avoidance), minimized-injury design... each of these make a difference. And note that he still just dumps the bees on the hive body with the brood (like Pat did). (side note, with AHB here in TX, only 50% of the bees would land on the hive and instead go airborne immediately when trying to dump them! I've been there more than once.)


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## Charlie B (May 20, 2011)

I stand by my original post.


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## TexasFreedom (Feb 25, 2016)

Charlie B said:


> I stand by my original post.


As do I, Charlie. I hope we can agree to disagree amicably. Neither of us want to argue against facts. 

And opinions/viewpoints are just that, one individual's perspective. I can say I like my Ford, you can say you like your GM. Neither of us are wrong based on each individual's experiences.

I can say that every one of my customers have been thrilled with my bee vacuum. But then, lots of people have chosen not to buy my vacuum and stuck with what they have (for their own individual reason). I say God Bless all of them: go in peace; those that buy and those that don't.


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