Hi bees been in for years I want to move bees from inside the hull of a boat. The drain hole is the only entrance place.
Can I place the back of a brood box with hole in back wall up against the drain hole so bees have to go through brood box to go out and will they move into brood box. I will put essentual oil lemongrass in box.
You’re describing a trap out - not sure the lemongrass is needed since the bees will be forced to traverse your new box anyway. I think the tricky parts are:
Making sure there are no other entrances
Preventing the foragers from getting back into the old location
Convincing the queen to come into the new box.
Maybe check this out:
Can you access the hull of the boat? Maybe you could cut it out instead of trapping? Or maybe you can trap most of the forager bees and then convince the queen and nurse bees to evacuate into the new box with some smoke?
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You can set up a trap-out like I did in the last part of this video.
You need a frame of open brood to entice the trapped out bees away from trying to get back into the entrance. Start this early in the morning so as to get a lot of bees out on the first day, which will keep the brood warm on the first night. They will commence make a new queen within a day or two, so don’t worry if the queen doesn’t get trapped out. Continue with the trap-out until no more bees come out. Keep checking the funnel to make sure it doesn’t get blocked by dead bees.
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