Trap-Out At Nolan & Cory's House, Phase 1

A week before Yvonne and I were to visit our dear friends Cory & Nolan's, I got a call from Cory. We were excited to see their new home, which they'd been working on so hard for a year and a half,  transforming a half-finished box with a roof into a magnificent home. As the Universe would have it, they also had several thousand new residents they hadn't anticipated: honey bees. I'd decided that I wasn't going to be in the bee extraction business just yet on my own. The Universe had decided otherwise. Taking up the mantle of a public service, I was nevertheless excited. Cory sent me this video to verify it was honey bees and to show thier location.

I spent the week researching my options. "Can I remove the outer wall of your brand new stone front porch?" Not surprised to hear the answer was no. I then decided to perform a trap-out. I poured a week of research into the project, eventually got in touch with Cleo Hogan of Kentucky, who'd perfected a trap-out technique designed to remove all the bees including the queen. To honor Kentucky, we enjoyed some bourbon slushies while we were at it.

_ Cleo's method is a longer process than the using the "cone method", but it's a long-term fix designed to get ALL of the bees, brood, and honey out of the cavity. Nolan has an engineer's mind and builds things for a living. Here, we go over the plans and discuss our plan of attack.

The Hogan trap-out method requires a little bit of specialized equipment. Low on funds for equipment, I decided to build my own using Nolan's assistance and power tools. I found an amazingly simple plan to build nucs by the late Dan Coates. It makes four out of a single sheet of plywood, including tops, bottoms and cleats. You simply double the width for deeps. You can find this information at the Bee Source forums. Since we needed a deep for the trap-out, we had to modify the plan. Working with Nolan was total fun!

_I gotta say I've been bitten by the power tools bug. DIY is much more inexpensive than buying all of the specialized boxes and boards for beekeeping. Guess I'm becoming a carpenter after all. Thank you once more, Universe. Amazing how this stuff works out, you know? Since Nolan was the construction expert, I brought the bee-related tools and blueprints, and kept the process organized as we ripped the sheets down to the different parts and pieces. Getting those mixed up would be a headache later that we'd want to avoid.

The basic concept of the trap-out is to reduce the bees' entrance to a single small opening, lure the bees into a new hive body, then close off the old entrance. The entrance is outfitted with a bridge tube. That tube will fit around another tube that feeds into a hive body. Here you can see the specialized tube fitting into the hive body, and it's larger female counterpart which will be fitted onto the bees' current entrance and exit.

_ Along the way frames of bees are taken out to weaken the colony. As the colony weakens, the queen, any remaining nurse bees, and any emerging brood will have less food available as the colony's numbers are reduced. With less food, fewer bees to keep her warm and the smell of open, fresh brood and eggs I'll put in the trap-out box, the queen will (hopefully) move to the new hive body.  A trap door is lowered once the queen has entered the box. With the trap door lowered, any remaining bees can only enter the hive body and not return to their original location. The process likely will take 6-8 weeks.

_I thanked Cory & Nolan for being kind to the honey bees. So many people would just spray with poison and assume it would take care of the bees. Almost always it doesn't, as you can't get into every nook and cranny they've colonized behind the walls, ceilings, floors or what-have-you. Here is the inner tube with the hole for the one-way entrance trap.

Part of the trap involves the "cone method" of removing bees. Basically you make a cone of small mesh screen, fray the ends a bit, make the end large enough for a drone to exit and the other end as large as the opening for the bees' original entrance. The cone, screen and frayed ends confuses the bees and they can't return to their original location. We only needed a small cone for this trap-out tube. The great thing about this tube is that I'll be able re-use it on other jobs.

We glued the cone in place then added staples for extra security. Since space is an issue in the confined space, Nolan cut a hole in the bottom corner of the hive body for the tube to slide in. Also cutting three sides instead of four is simpler and in my book, better. I used a hammer to convince the snugly fitting inner tube to extend outside the hive. Our bridge tube is about seven inches long. The inner tube is about five inches, so there's plenty of overlap and it'll be easy to install.

Yvonne and Cory were awesome enough to document us men-folk making this special equipment. Yvonne gets in frame while documenting the action. Here Nolan uses his pneumatic brad nailer to attach the front handhold. I gotta get me one of those things. A pneumatic brad nailer and air compressor sure would make for a nice birthday or Christmas present (hint, hint). Below you see the trap door Nolan made. It's simplicity is awesome. An L-bracket. That's it. Did I tell you he's an engineer?

He added a bit of strapping, folded up a couple times, for a spacer so the bracket would be close enough to the door but far enough away that it can slide easily in and out. He also put in a top brace so the trap door will be secure once it's slid into place. Nolan later added a handle to the door: a simple wood screw on the side. Brilliant.

Below, Nolan attaches the back cleat. Part of this brilliant box design is the cleats for the handhold. The front and back are shorter than the sides. The outside cleats even up against the sides, making for a recessed lip at the front and back for the frames to rest inside the box. No dados required. Nolan then affixed a bit of screen onto the entrance tube we'll place at the colony's entrance. He folded the screen back to allow for ease of passage so the rough edges don't get in the way of the bees coming and going. This reduced the opening to better fit the bees' vertical entrance on their patio overhang. We mounted the bridge tube to the stucco of the patio using L-brackets, a hammer drill and masonry screws. We added a bottom panel that jutted out to make up for the notch at the bottom of the stucco trim and patio wall.

Ta-daa, box complete. There was a bit too much overhang on top. Nolan will trim it back to 3/4" so I can easily pick the box up, but still leave enough overhang to keep rain out. There are small cleats on the underside of the top which keeps the lid on. I later found out that as the cleats rest on top of the top bars, the cover is automatically ventilated. The Coates plan is truly simple and efficient. This is a migratory style outer cover. No inner cover is required. OK, building is complete! Now we need to suit up and do some installation. I fired up the smoker and then showed Nolan how to put on and secure a veil.

Unfortunately, Nolan had to suit up in the old nylon coveralls my brother Tim had given me. You look like you either work at a meat packing plant or you're a psycho killer attending a disco ball in this thing. I assured him nothing was getting through that nylon though. Since he was a little concerned about bees climbing up his legs, I secured his leg openings with duct tape. (Always have duct tape on hand, as well as a stapler. I figured he wouldn't be keen on the idea of my using a stapler securing his pants.)

Nolan completes his get up and our photo team insisted on a posed shot. Nolan's first honey bee experience and my first trap-out was about to commence. Although I had a brand new hatless veil, I was about to find out that I hate, hate, hate looking up in that hatless veil. You end up getting the screen squished against your face and your vision's obscured. There must be a better veil out there. I'll retire this thing to backup status and hopefully soon.

Oh, crap. Did I forget to mention I'm afraid of heights? Yep, my second bee removal experience and again, more than one story up. Guess I'll be getting over my fear of heights along the way, too. Thanks, Universe. We put his ladder in place. It took me a while to get used to going up and then getting comfortable on the ladder. Nolan did an amazing job of coaching me through it and teaching me a technique for working on the ladder. After several attempts and lots of encouragement from Nolan and Cory, I finally made it up there. We slid the trap into place to see how it would fit, and then I marked positions for the L-bracket screws, top and bottom.

Then it was time to drill. Using Nolan's hammer drill, I put in some pilot holes. Everyone said there was a huge cloud of bees that were appearing as work was getting underway. Funny thing was, the more bees there were the calmer I got. I could smell the honey and comb of the hive from inside the overhang as I worked. That and the buzz made me forget I was working 10 feet or so up (it may as well have been a mile as far as I was concerned). Everyone said the photos didn't do justice to the number of bees flying about. I just knew I enjoyed their company.

We'd bought air conditioner foam insulation at the hardware store prepping for the trap-out. That was a GREAT call. I used my hive tool to stuff the foam into the crack that went 2 feet up from the hive's entrance. You must seal off all other entries for this to work. Once that was done, I inspected for a while. Sure enough some bees had found tiny holes to still go in and out of. I used as much foam as I could. It was perfect. But to be sure, I duct taped all along the upper crack and around the tube bridge to ensure a bee-proof seal. As I closed off all but the tube's entrance, guard bees coming out to defend and foragers trying to return home starting quickly building up. I was ecstatic when I saw two bees find the new entrance and start fanning their Nasinov glands to send a pheromone that said, "Hey, girls, over here! This is our entrance and exit." Nolan and I made some videos with Cory's iPhone while we were there. Hopefully we'll get those uploaded on the next trap-out post.

Top view of the commotion going on after the bridge was installed. They were quite confused at first. These girls are beautiful, yellow honey bees. Eventually they'll make a nice addition to my apiary full of dark Russians and local hybrids. You can also see a group of bees just outside the entrance. They performed a parade, exiting the tube and then turning around and going back towards it, then repeating in a loop. They were a greeting party to show returning foragers exactly where to come and go. I'd spent an hour or so up the ladder. Not bad for an acrophobe. Phase 1 was complete!