Bushkill Bee Vac
Mar 27th, 2008 by Robo
A new approach to a bee vac
I was not happy with the functioning of my current box in a box design bee vac. Don’t get me wrong, the bee vac has become perhaps my most valued tool for doing removals. But it had a few things that frustrated me. Yes it worked great at sucking up the bees and reducing the congestion of bees flying around. It allowed me to collect the majority of the bees and not have to return at a later time to pick up the hive. It also allowed me to bring them home in the car. All important things when you travel long distances to do removals.
The part that seemed less than efficient was getting the bees back out of the screened inner box and into their new Langstroth home. First of all, the screened box wasn’t correctly sized for Langstroth hive bodies, so I was never able to cleanly slide open the bottom trap door and get all the bees into the hive. I tried an empty super on top of the hive, a hive with no frames, and a hive with the center frames removed. Nothing seemed to work well without getting the bees in a uproar again and killing bees. The other thing that made this dumping a frustrating event was that many times I find myself getting home after dark and tired. Not wanting to keep the bees in the vac overnight, I often found myself in the dark and rushing.
I got to thinking and came up with a new design. The idea was based upon the following:
- Reduce the stress on the bees by not moving them twice.
- Minimal manipulation when I arrive home after dark.
- Small, light, and compact.
Why not just suck them into their new hive? So I came up with a bottom and top to place on standard Langstroth hive bodies and suck the bees right into their new hive. The design also allows for the use of your standard shop vac if you don’t want or have a dedicated vacuum for the bee vac.
I was able to construct the whole thing out of one 8ft 1×8 and less than half a sheet of Luan.
The bottom is simply a 3″ deep box that has a slanted bottom that is recessed in the box. It allows for a 2-1/4″ hole in the front to attach the inlet vacuum hose. The slanted bottom will ease the bees to the back of the hive and up to the bottom of the hive body and out of the direct air flow.
The top is also a 3″ deep box but has a screened bottom and a slide out top cover. the slide out cover has two holes. Once for the outlet to the vacuum, and a second with a plexiglass cover for a bypass. By opening and closing the plexiglass cover, the amount of suction at the inlet can be adjusted. The reason the cover was designed to slide out is for ventilation during transportation.
Once the vacuuming has been completed, the top slides off exposing a wide open screen top which will provide plenty of ventilation.
Another benefit of this design is that the capacity can easily be adjusted by adding additional hive bodies. If it is a small colony, a single hive body can be used,
as shown in the picture at the top of the article. If it is a bigger colony, a second hive body can be used as shown at the right.
The bottom box has hooks on both sides that allow the whole setup to be held together with a ratchet strap. This will make moving easy without the worry of pieces shifting and bees escaping. To help keep the strap aligned on the top box, small recesses where cut on the edge to keep the strap positioned correctly.
Steps for Using
Unpack the bee vac components and based upon the size of the colony, decide how many hive bodies/supers you will need. Assemble the unit by placing the hive bodies/supers on the bottom box, place the top box on the hive bodies and use a ratchet strap to secure the setup.
Remove one screw from inlet screen, swing screen out of the way and install suction hose.
Install hose from vacuum into the top return port hole, and verify cover locking nail is in place.
Turn on the vacuum and adjust the bypass cover to get the desired suction on the inlet hose. You want just enough suction to pull the bees off the comb. Too much suction and you can injure/kill bees if they slam too hard into the hive.
Now your set to start sucking up your bees. Go to it!
When you have finished sucking up all the bees, with the vacuum still running (so bees don’t come out). Remove the suction hose from the bottom and swing the screen cover back in place. Secure with a screw. Once cover is in place, you can turn off the vacuum.
Remove the hose from the vacuum and the cover locking nail. Slide the top cover off. The hive now has plenty of ventilation for transporting.
Once you arrive at your destination, you can simply place a cover on top and swing the screen cover open. Once given time to settle in, the hive can be placed on permanent bottom board and fitted with proper covers.
Modifications
So you don’t want to drag around your shop vac or your shop vac has a removable blower. You can simply make an adapter to mount to the top cover. If you do this, make sure you mount it on the back of the cover like I have done so that you can slide off the cover for ventilation without having to remove the ratchet strap.
Although I have sized mine for BeeMax polystyrene hives, it could be easily sized to work with standard wooden Langstroth hives. It would work equally as well with medium depth or 8-frame equipment.
If anyone is interested in this bee vac, but does not have the means to build one, Contact Me and perhaps I can help.
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thinking of building a swarm sucker myself. if i used a standard 10 frame deep with a slideout bottom don’t see why you couldn’t just set it on top of a box with frames, slide out the bottom board and let the bees fall or crawl down into their new home. seems like you could leave for the night if you wanted, go back the next day, smoke ‘em a little if you had to, remove the swarm sucker and put on a regular top cover.
you said the above didn’t work particularly well for you. what problem did you encounter?
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Robo Reply:
April 16th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
bryan,
A few points that lead to my dissatisfaction.
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Why don’t you make both the top and bottom slides, on one side cover it with screen so that when you go to hive you can open the screened side spray bees with sugar water then shake them to one side open other side and shake into hive like hiving a package of bees? Just my two cents. I haven’t made one yet just looking for plans and thought this might be a good idea for your construction.
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Robo Reply:
June 10th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Richard,
What you described is the usual box within a box design.
Using one of that type is what lead me to build this new one. I don’t want to shake and dump the bees anymore than needed. The trip down the hose an into the vacuum is enough trauma for them. I also dislike dumping because of any debris that you suck up ends on top of the bees as well. This way the bees get sucked in once and are in the hive. Once settled, I just pick it off the bottom and place it on a bottom board with no additional stress on the bees and all the debris remains in the bottom.
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Daddy and I had a cutout to do a cpl weeks ago and built a copy of your vac.
It worked great. Sucked up 3 or 4 lbs bees and had very few dead on bottom when through. Will never do another cutout without vac.
Thanks for the idea.
Johnny
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Thanks for posting this excellent design. I built one out of scrap lumber in my shop last week. My beekeeping buddy and I used it for a large cut out 2 days ago. It was amazingly gentle on the bees and made the job at hand easy. I set it up with a deep with 6 frames of pierco foundation. I tied (with string wraps) the brood comb we removed into wooden deep frames as we went along. Wound up with 9 frames of brood. We then spritzed 1:1 sugar water on the bees through the top screen and slid the brood comb box on while sliding the screened top section over and off, then moved the top quickly up, over and down on top again. Unfortunately I did smash a dozen bees with that maneuver but we got the brood back to them. Looking forward to using the vac again. I plan on making another so we each have one at hand in our vehicles for swarm calls. Thanks again for sharing your great design, Best regards Brian
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Thanks for sharing your design. You mentioned that one reason for this design was to prevent debris from being dumped into the hive. Doesn’t the junk still get sucked up between the frames? How many frames did you put in the hive body? How did you add brood to avoid the problems mentioned by Brian J?
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Robo Reply:
October 1st, 2008 at 10:27 am
Doesn’t the junk still get sucked up between the frames?
The volume of the super makes the air velocity drastically decrease once it exits the hose. This causes the majority of the debris (and bees) to drop out of the air flow. If you suck up some really light debris, like fiberglass insulation, it will continue towards the vacuum motor, but will end up on the upper screen and not in between frames.
How many frames did you put in the hive body?
I put 10 frames in the hive body, a combination of empty frames and frames with comb. If you put less than 9 frames in the box, there is a chance they will slide sideways and fall off the frame rests when you move it.
How did you add brood to avoid the problems mentioned by Brian J?
I use polystyrene nucs to carry home the frames that have the cut-out brood. Depending on the amount of bees, I add a box on top with these frames, or replace the empty frames with them once I get the hive situated in the new location.
rob…
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Hi
Thanks for sharing a great design.
I really want to build one.
Just one query - Do you use the vacuum, mainly for the removal of established hives, or also for new swarm removal ?
I mean if a ball of swarm bees, is hanging from an accessible small tree branch, for instance, would you just knock it into a box. In the conventional way. And not use the vacuum ?
Regards John
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Robo Reply:
November 13th, 2008 at 8:28 am
John,
I now use it for both cut-outs and hanging swarms. I cover a large area, so a good portion of the time, I need to do the removal in just one visit. Also with gas prices, I prefer to use my car instead of a truck, so with the bee vac, I can go and suck the bees up, load the in the car and not worry about bees being loose in the car. Here is a hanging swarm that was ~25ft up. I left the vac on the ground and used a ladder and long hose to suck them up.
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John M Reply:
November 13th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Yes, it certainly must be so much more convenient, to only have to make one trip.
With cutouts, I suppose it inevitably involves some demolition work, on buildings. To remove all the comb. I suppose you would have to charge a reasonable fee. Are there some beehives you wouldn’t try to remove ?
John
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