Yet Another Bee Vacuum (YABV)

[Mike Henderson]

After I made my first bee vacuum, and used it to rescue bees, I found some things I wanted to improve. So I sold "Bee Vacuum, Version One" to a local beekeeper and made "Bee Vacuum, Version Two." I documented the building of version two, which you can see here.

I'm always open to suggestions for improvements. Maybe they will lead to "Bee Vacuum, Version Three."

The bee vacuum is not very expensive in materials but it is labor intensive to build.

Mike

BeeVac105.jpg

[Joe Ruden]

Thanks for this Mike and very timely. My wife and I went to look at some wood this weekend. As I was looking at the wood, my wife asks the lady "are those bee hives?" The lady said we could have them all for $25. We are just starting out in bee keeping but said sure and had to make two trips there was so much stuff. And I got some nice wood too.

[Mike Henderson]

Thanks for this Mike and very timely. My wife and I went to look at some wood this weekend. As I was looking at the wood, my wife asks the lady "are those bee hives?" The lady said we could have them all for $25. We are just starting out in bee keeping but said sure and had to make two trips there was so much stuff. And I got some nice wood too.

Wow, you really lucked out. You don't have your location on your post but if you're working with European bees you need to learn about varroa mites and how to control them. Otherwise, you have a good chance to lose one or more hives over winter.

How many hives did you get?

Mike

[Joe Ruden]

Wow, you really lucked out. You don't have your location on your post but if you're working with European bees you need to learn about varroa mites and how to control them. Otherwise, you have a good chance to lose one or more hives over winter.

How many hives did you get?

Mike

We are in Fort Wayne IN. I thought I had it in my profile but will add it. There were mite strips that came with our haul. We haven't been through everything but I think there are 8 or 9 hives.

[Jim Becker]

Very nice, Mike. Perhaps Professor Dr. SWMBO will need one of these things someday, too.

Joe, there's SO much to learn and the bees are fascinating. Enjoy the experience! One suggestion...since you got used woodenware, you may want to consider putting a torch to the inside of the hive boxes to help sterilize them. You may also want to join the BeeSource forum...find it via Google. And remember one thing...for every ten beekeepers...there are eleven opinions.

[Joe Ruden]

Very nice, Mike. Perhaps Professor Dr. SWMBO will need one of these things someday, too.

Joe, there's SO much to learn and the bees are fascinating. Enjoy the experience! One suggestion...since you got used woodenware, you may want to consider putting a torch to the inside of the hive boxes to help sterilize them. You may also want to join the BeeSource forum...find it via Google. And remember one thing...for every ten beekeepers...there are eleven opinions.

Thanks Jim. My wife has the torch ready for the sterilization. She uses the torch quite often to clean our Angora rabbit cages of all the fur that they shed.

We will look into the forum and are lucky enough to have a good organization here that provides mentors. Only problem is we live in the city limits and can only have two hives.

[Jim Becker]

Trust me, two colonies will keep you busy and it's not hard to split them to help out other new Beeks or to make up for any winter problems you run into. We are at three with three splits busy making queens "as we speak" to go to six. In our second year. LOL

[Mike Henderson]

After using this bee vacuum for a while, I found a problem when used with swarms and modified the bee vacuum to address the issues. I documented the changes I made to the bee vacuum here.

This has allowed me to transfer a swarm from the bee vacuum to a brood box without out stressing (or upsetting) the bees.

Mike

[John K Jordan]

..I documented the changes I made to the bee vacuum here.
This has allowed me to transfer a swarm from the bee vacuum to a brood box without out stressing (or upsetting) the bees.

Did you find the Dewalt vacuum sufficient to clean up after a swarm?

I caught three swarms this spring. One was 35' in the air (fun with drama), one maybe 25' in the air on a branch (much easier), and one 4' from the ground on the trunk of a small tree just a few yards from the hives. For the last one I brushed as many as I could into a bag held open by a ring, dumped them into a box with frames. Repeated that 6-8 times until I got most of the bees and evidently the queen. (the ring makes it easy to instantly close the bag) There were a few bees remaining which I assume eventually found the hive - it's a strong hive now. Would a bee vacuum have done this quicker? I've never used one.

I think I looked at all the pictures of the construction on several pages. I didn't see a drawing with dimensions - do you have one somewhere?

JKJ

[Mike Henderson]

Did you find the Dewalt vacuum sufficient to clean up after a swarm?

I caught three swarms this spring. One was 35' in the air (fun with drama), one maybe 25' in the air on a branch (much easier), and one 4' from the ground on the trunk of a small tree just a few yards from the hives. For the last one I brushed as many as I could into a bag held open by a ring, dumped them into a box with frames. Repeated that 6-8 times until I got most of the bees and evidently the queen. (the ring makes it easy to instantly close the bag) There were a few bees remaining which I assume eventually found the hive - it's a strong hive now. Would a bee vacuum have done this quicker? I've never used one.

I think I looked at all the pictures of the construction on several pages. I didn't see a drawing with dimensions - do you have one somewhere?

JKJ

Let's see if I can address your questions:

The DeWalt vacuum has plenty of suction to capture the bees. One thing I found was that if I remove the filter I get a bit more suction, especially if I was using the vacuum as a vacuum between bee captures. If you're doing a complex removal, bring a spare 5Ah battery.

I swear by a bee vacuum. It doesn't upset the bees a whole lot (at least before they get sucked through that dark tunnel called a hose) and you can transfer them to a hive with much less upset and stress. I've had swarms that were in the middle of a bushy shrub. There would be no way to get them out without doing damage to the shrub. With the bee vacuum, I start on the bottom of the swarm and work around it. The bees get sucked in but the remaining bees just stay in the bunch - almost none of them fly out.

Then when I get home, I put the bee vacuum on top of a full sized brood box and the bees migrate down into the box (with exceptions as described in my writeup).

Regarding size, the bee vacuum should have the same outside dimensions (length and width) as a standard hive, which is 19 7/8" by 16 1/4" (for a 10 frame hive). If you use 8 frame hives you'll have to check the width.

The height is not that important as long as you have enough volume to hold the biggest hive you'll capture. I think I used about 11". I talk about dimensions in my build tutorial.

But there aren't any critical dimensions except the length and width so that it fits on a standard brood box. The rest of the dimensions are up to you and you can't hardly go wrong. I built the bee vacuum out of my head - no drawn plans before I built.

When I built my first bee vacuum I just had an idea and worked from there. I made mistakes that caused me to build a second version of the vacuum, and then to modify that second version after some usage.

Regarding beekeeping, I make mistakes but I learn from my mistakes. The sad thing is that the bees pay the price of my mistakes.

Mike

[John K Jordan]

Regarding beekeeping, I make mistakes but I learn from my mistakes. The sad thing is that the bees pay the price of my mistakes.

Thanks. That might make a great winter project.

Remember that the bees will likely pay a bigger price if you did nothing.

JKJ

[Jim Becker]

I can actually understand how the modification helps! And thanks for posting it at BeeSource, too.