Bee Vacuum build

Something I built to recover swarms, it uses 8-frame boxes, so I can use my Flow hive brood box with it. Suction pressure is just about perfect, not too strong to the point that it will hurt the bees.

3 Likes

Bruce,

Awesome job n pix’s of that Bee Vac ! Just getting back into beekeeping after long time away. Not ready myself to venture into advances swarm retrieval yet. Did it a lot as a kids but usually in trees n bushes. Again great pix’s !

Fascinating, I am really looking forward to hearing how it works out for you. Please post more!

Dawn

Been a long time for me as well, but now that I’m retired because of health issues, I need a new hobby. At an apartment complex I stay at during the week, we get an average of 2 swarms a season and where they like to hide is difficult to get to without the use of a vacuum. Usually I’d call a beekeeper to recover them and they keep wondering why I don’t do it myself. My reply was as a kid the one job on the farm I hated the most was honey extraction and clean up. With the Flow Hive I decided to give it another go.

There was time a few years back when I could have done with just such a thing.
Jeff has a video of holding a brood frame over a swarm and they all marched on.
Mind you, you can only do that in your own apiary.

Do you know…I love that.
I shut myself in the sun room, put some music on, don my surgical scrubs and spend a hot sunny afternoon spinning the honey into buckets. Wonderful.The bees gave their lives for that honey…they deserve a little toil in return…just my feeling

We brought our home-built honey spinner with us all the way from the UK, so of course we had to have 230V power installed in the kitchen for honey extraction! :smile:

Fortunately, Langstroth medium frames just about squeeze into it (they are 2 inches longer than BS frames)!

1 Like