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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: Blair Christian <blair.christian AT gmail.com>
  • To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org, durham-county-beekeepers AT googlegroups.com
  • Subject: [ocba] FYI: Overview of our first cutout....
  • Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2012 14:39:51 -0400

Hi All,

Alwyn and I did our first cutout today. A family in Durham had a
rotten oak cut down, and there was a bee colony living in it. The log
was cut into sections, including one cut through the colony (comb cut
in half). Then the two sections were reassembled by the homeowners
and left in the corner for a few days. I strapped the two wood
sections together, covered all the holes with screen and brought it to
my place yesterday so we could do the cutout next to all my tools.
Alwyn made a really outstanding bee vac. The bees were more passive
than I could have imagined. The comb was cut by the chainsaw into
pieces and some of the pieces weren't attached to the inner trunk at
the bottom and fell down to the bottom of the tree cavity. The bees
had built quite a bit of new comb since then (given the low nectar
flow), and the queen had filled everything up with eggs. The comb
doesn't look more than 2 year old to me. The inside of the tree was
pretty rotten, but it looked polished by the bees at the top- I don't
know if it was wax or propolis in there. We put the remaining comb
into some wired frames and rubber banded it in for insurance. I had a
queen catcher ready, but never saw the queen- the bees were clumpy on
the comb, and were easy to vaccuum that way. They have eggs though so
the queen is in there, and the bees can make a supersedure/emergency
queen if they need to. All in all, a great first cut out experience.
Over prepared is definitely the way to go.

The photos are the 10 or so at the top:
https://picasaweb.google.com/106022773068627809372/Bees#

Best,
Blair



  • [ocba] FYI: Overview of our first cutout...., Blair Christian, 06/09/2012

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