The ideal location for a feral bee hive.

it's a UFO you have found a UFO hello Mr Ed Good Time Charlie and Wreck-It Ralph man it's the Three Amigos can you tell look wait we gotta move over we're all dressed up like Mona Mona went and made us all jackets now it's a beautiful beautiful March 4th 2023 morning probably right now 50 degrees maybe a little bit warm but right I mean it's it's just wonderful that was great what are we gonna do today Charlie I'm up what are we gonna do today we're going to eat this afternoon before we eat we're gonna get some bees we've got some bees back of us right here we're gonna get the Ralph's gonna take care of that and Charlie's hungry y'all ready let's go yeah so we better better hurry up well so the the deal is we're in Abita Springs which is only about five miles from where I live and got a call actually the call I got was probably about three or four weeks ago and the homeowner works on a on a on a tugboat in fact he's the captain and he works up and down the river so he's not here every weekend and so we're we finally got the break that we were looking for we came out here and on this beautiful day we're going to take these bees out of his house now Ralph you've seen the layout what are we going to be doing we're actually just going to cut the fascia board take some of the soffit off and pull the bees out it's a pretty easy job this one this one ought to be pretty good Charlie how much time two hours two uh I predicted to be two hours and by the grace of God oh the whole thing I forgot to imagine the bees that are here are actually going to be staying here the homeowner Harlan he says well look would it be all right if I kept the bees so that that was another part of the delay he had to get his um b-box ready and so he got a great one oh what kind of bee box is it a new BB box Charlie would get a picture that but we're going to go ahead and we're going to set him up set these bees in here in his box and I'll give you the details on how that's going to work out but by the grace of God the bees that are in the house right now they're going to be in yulin's box in just a few hours I think it's right in the middle of all these blueberries too yes y'all ready to Wrangle we're ready ready to go that's right let's do it so you see on the camera there's our bees and then as you look onto the house there's the laser and they're right there in fact I see bees walking out right there so Ralph is gonna get ready to work his wonders and open up that hive and we're gonna see exactly what the Beehive looks like oh looks like we got visitors got a few peeking oh look right there if I need my suit or not in a minute oh yeah they're coming after you Ralph oh yeah yeah go ahead and put your suit on though yeah boy yeah yeah put your suit on huh I had one of Betty hit me so fast yeah so we're gonna pull this piece of soffit off it it starts like right here it's already broken here so we'll pull this piece off exposed to be we're gonna try to cut this station here and it's already got a joint here and pull that off so Jeff can get in and get to the bees they're pretty active right now so it definitely gonna be active in a minute [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] well Ralph has done an excellent job because what was important in my estimation of exposing the hive is to give me clear access to the comb to the to the ceiling where the the comb is attached or the floor to where the comb is attached now Charlie can you zoom in on the space on this empty space right here this is this is what we're dealing with with the comb on this side right here this space right here probably goes back that's probably two feet 20 inches maybe so it goes back about 20 inches and then there's another joist running this way so it's it's actually a stop the bees cannot go past where that joist is about 20 inches back and the cavity is a beautiful okay if you can imagine this space right here it is almost identical to the space that's in a long Hive at least the width of it now the depth it doesn't really matter because you can have four feet whatever but this space right in here is just ideal for bees now what's other other reason that's ideal for bees in houses is the insulation so the insulation that's in these walls prevents or prevents allows the bees a certain amount of temperature control and and with that idea of of insulation this is why I designed uh well I didn't design it but the layout of my my lands Hive is to mimic this space right here this is almost now it could be a little bit deeper but as you can see the way the bees construct their comb it fills the space entirely which is just the same as they do in a long Hive and the the idea of the space the the area of the space that idea is the perfect um It's mimicked Perfectly in the long Hops and as you can see by the health of this particular heart now I would I don't know how long these bees have been here probably just one season a full year but they've I'm guessing they have used all of the space that they could possibly have so my guess is we're going to have at least seven if not eight or more sections of comb in here the idea of mimicking space uh in in building a beehive is so important because you can see how healthy these bees can get you give them the right space a little bit of insulation and protection now they had to they had a lot of surface area uh entrance for the entrance it was very large so they had to do a lot of use a lot of bees to protect that but the health of this Colony they didn't have any issues with other bees getting in there and you could see or as you saw when Ralph was taking this apart they did not appreciate our intrusion before one more thing before I I start to to do the removal itself I want to uh thank my buddy Nora over at Pierce company for sending me this heat knife now the reason he designed this knife was to clean uh frames with but I'm going to put it to another purpose today and and it's ideal for this type of removal where I'm going to be using the heat from the knife to be melting the wax along the edges of the of the joists as well as the floor and as it's got an angled face to it I should be able to scrape really nice to be able to cut that now I know we didn't design this knife for this purpose but I think it's going to be a good application for this removal and you may be seeing me using this knife more [Music] thank you [Music] okay [Music] um [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] pieces of Comb inside already and I want to just make a couple other observations um and show you what I see as I'm going into this hive I know everybody is familiar with that word b space and so here is a feral hive and it shows you can see very very clearly how the bees leave a space along the edge of the comb for them to pursue as well as the bottom you see how the the bees don't even attach the comb to the bottom because that's their crawl space they can walk along the bottom of this structure and then go into where they need to go as well as on the other side as well so you have b space and then there's at some points you'll see it's connected where the hive is they connect the comb to the wall and that's that's for structure now here's another interesting little point right here as well as b space they also will create these openings or these little doors or Windows however you want to call them and you can see there you go see how the bees use that to travel they don't have to go to the outside of the bottom to travel through they can go through these little spaces as well to get to different parts of the of the comb some observations of what I've seen so far I've already seen drones on the comb and here you go look at this right right here we have let me see if I can find it and where is it and right right there look at that we have a drone coming out right now so it's once this guy comes out he's 10 days away from being a mature drone which is he'll be able to go off and fly and mate after 10 days but before that he's just going to be walking around the cone getting older and getting ready and this is a very very good sign indication of swarming about to happen when you start to see the Swarm set and that's why it says the Drone cells when you start to see a number of drone cells in your in your colony and then when you see them emerging and when they're walking on the comb here are where March 4th and so we're we're in swarm season right now and the drones coming out or just an indication of that time of year that we're in now I'm going to grab that knife again and I'm going to cut that comb and I'm telling you that knife is working awesome in here it just goes right through that um that attached coming it is that's tough comb you got to use a lot of muscle to cut through that but with that hot knife it just goes right through it all right so first I'm Gonna Knock some of this propolis off at the sides right here to get my blade in there now I just I mean it's just I push just a little bit boy that knife goes right through and you can see how the whole piece of Comb flexes and I got all on that side come on this side do that side and now I'm going to go up on the top now at this point where if the comb drops it's going to hit the bottom so I don't even have to get my hand underneath it I just hold it and let the as as I feel the knife move in I push it forward and you can see how effortlessly that works I know where this is a great knife for this job that that piece of Comb is going to come right out of there let me set the Knife Down turn it upside down for Ralph to vacuum the bees off the back side and we'll put it in the ice chest foreign you see how those bees do you think you got it all figured out and what do they do they throw you to curveball you see that they've changed the directions on how they're building the comb now instead of going across the framing this way they're running lengthwise parallel with it well it's at an angle but you know it's just the way it is I would have loved to have the whole section of high B the same way but it is what it is so there's I've already seen probably six or seven cups and look here's you see you see all the the cups right in here none of them none of them have anything in them so they're just cups so this is all signs of what's coming in the next week or two [Music] Dale what a beautiful sight gosh and and again the here's your b space between the cones right there as well as on the bottom thank you I'm ready thank you Jesus [Applause] thank you Jesus thank you little man look at that that Queen is so big I know the rooster would have seen that one I didn't even need a flashlight that that butter hers is glowing like a light bulb inside of there wait thank you Jesus oh my gosh thank you look at that we're down to our last piece of comb and just a couple of bees left so Charlie said Jeff Jeff you need to you need to need to talk about why those bees decided to build their cone the way they built their cone now of course this is just speculation but I suspect that they started right where you see that first part right there um with all those bees are on right now they started in the corner and that does make the most sense that they started there and they started working the hive out and they put it on the angle like you saw as I was removing it and then once they filled up that space well they didn't want to leave so then at the front they started building the comb across wise so they maximized the space available to them and man these guys did a great job now I would have loved to use a Norris knife the whole time but it was so far back in there I couldn't have gotten it and I had to remove I had to use the the 16 inch serrated knife to begin this because I couldn't there was no wiggle room in there for me to work so I had to remove those first couple pieces of honeycomb and then after that I possibly could have used his but since I had that the long knife out and it was harder that the the heated knife cuts through that stuff really easy I was struggling to cut through that comb up there but got the job done let me finish vacuum up these beads well folks other than a few High beetles well I say it's more than a few probably a dozen or so that Hive it ain't there no more now one of the things that Fred asked oh that's Professor Fred asks me to do is to make comment on the bottom of the hive now this Hive was extremely clean and that is a great sign of genetics in the bees when the bees keep a clean underneath of their hive that's a that's a quality of genetic quality that you definitely want in in your bees now I've made some of well I'd say 50 of that is from my going about cutting the comb out of there but for the most part it is very clean you can see it's almost like the swept the floor until you get back here and then there's a little bit more dust and stuff back there so that that's definitely bee stuff that I didn't make that mess right there other than the big pieces of cone what was this thing let me show you what what we took out of that wall now this was the last uh box right here um and this is just that those end pieces so mostly honey there's nothing in there but look at this box with the Brew oh my goodness is it mostly no yeah this is no this is the honey one yeah this is the honey one golly this is a lot of comb and wax and then this this is all about brood right here so I I think I counted uh 14 or 15 sections of Comb on this Hive wow beautiful heart now let's go over and look at our bees here they are and our Queen and being it's so cool right now I figured that's why they're not all up on the top but there's probably 15 000 beans in here if not more it's a lot of bees are you gonna say Malcolm in the Middle are you gonna straighten out Ralph's here huh let's see right over here well you know I gotta get it out of his yeah what about mine Charlie I got it anybody notice that hey he's cut he cut his hair now Mona said she didn't wanted his hair yeah that's why she told me to leave it oh man he's got a mullet he's gonna grow a mullet okay all right so so a couple things before we we wind this thing up first thing look at this look at this shirt so let me see right there you go so this is from Johnny Murdock up in St Louis Missouri another YouTuber and B Wrangler he's probably I think he's got about I don't know 70 videos out maybe I'm gonna put his uh Channel Link in the description of this video if y'all want to go and check it out but Johnny thanks so much for sending me he actually sent me two shirts the other shirt he sent me I'll probably never you'll probably never see me wear because it's a picture of the 628 dirt boots and I don't want to worry I think that's that's just competition so these will be bees that's it but will Good Time Charlie be good times that's it thanks for watching no not yet not yet Johnny you were you were here the whole time come on you did what you got what did I say well naturally I was behind the camera but I'll tell you what it was pretty straightforward I was really impressed if we wouldn't have had all of this lecturing going on and all that it would have been that's too awesome Fred Don's that's why because of him he makes me do it that's it well thank you keep on watching I guess I guess that must be it was a it was an easy cut easy easy it was straightforward like Charlie said um the weird thing was the way to comb was it was we thought it was going to be straight back like that but then we got past a few it went on an angle which threw Jeff off a little bit but he it don't take much yeah but he got his stuff together and we got him out of there and Ralph did such a good job of opening up that Hive because it just it was it made the removal of the comb perfect and how he cut it and and to keep the bees contained in there good job thank you sir good job good Charlie good job on the camera because Charlie had that camera holding it up like a boom trying to get those shots so I said once or twice said Jeff get out the way so you'll never see that I added that part out there you go so that's it but anyway thanks for watching keep all watching we'll be making more God bless Mr red Wreck-It Ralph and Good Time Charlie we're out of here until the next video God bless God bless [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Jeff Horchoff Bees

Views: 44,793

Keywords: The ideal location for a feral bee hive, honey, honey bee, honeycombs, honey bees, feral bee, feral bees, feral bee hive, feral bee colony, removing bees, removing bees nest, removing bees from house, pierce beekeeping equipment, hot knives, brood comb, honey comb, Three Amigos, bee space, hygentics of bees, layens hive beekeeping, queen cups, swarm cells, swarms, hive beetles, frederick dunn youtube, Mr. Ed, Jeff Horchoff Bees

Id: gLH6Amlpn0w

Length: 29min 17sec (1757 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 31 2023