In 28 years of beekeeping, I’ve never tried “smoking them out”, until yesterday. We smoked most of a colony of bees out of a large cable drum. I couldn’t finish the job because the workers were waiting for me to finish so they could lock up & go home.
I was absolutely amazed at how much smoke I used & over a long period of time. A couple of hours. I refuelled my smoker about 4 times.
It took until just before we had to leave before they really started streaming out.
Wow, interesting. For that much time spent smoking, you could have set up a meat smoker with some ribs and pulled pork - just exhaust it over the bees. Then you get bees and dinner done all at once! 
Great idea! Yummy smoked honey ribs. 
Hi Dawn, I was cautious of how much smoke I used at the start. I expected the whole colony to come streaming out & take flight. Anyway we’re making a video of it. Hi Dawn, Jeff asked me to finish this. One of our native wildlife was having a great meal of bees, and we managed to capture it on the video and it was we thought pretty cool. I am looking forward to seeing the video finished. Cheers Wilma
This is a video of a Water Dragon that turned up for a feed of bees while we were working on getting the bees out of the cable drum.
I look forward to seeing that, Jeff. Meanwhile that lizard was impressive!
Hi & thanks Dawn, we loved him/her. My first comment on You Tube was from Artisan Tony. He reckons if that lizard was eating his bees, he would have squashed his ass. I’m sure he was only joking:)
Hi Dawn, I finally got it onto You Tube.
Thanks for sharing another great video. What did you do about the remaining bees in the drum, Jeff? Looks like you got a nice population of bees out, though - did you split them further?
Dawn
Your welcome, thank YOU Dawn, we were fairly convinced that after the 4 day gap, all the bees were out. Those few on the outside towards the end were still trying to go back in. That’s why I quickly jammed the rag back in.
The bloke told me at the start that they wanted to use the drums in just over a weeks time. That would have ruled out a trap-out from the beginning because a trap-out would have taken a lot more time to extract the bees out.
Yes I finished up making a second colony, I left that colony as it is & only swapped one of the frames containing queen cells for another frame of brood. Mainly because both those frames came from a hive with a queen I like to propagate from.
I still have to pick the hive up, I turned the box so the entrance faces away from where the blokes are likely to work. Also I lowered it down a bit. I thought about placing it on one box, then remembered the lizard:) so I settled on placing it on 2 boxes.
I got a message to the boss that they can use the trailer whenever they like, however I still have to remind them that that drum will be a magnet for future swarms.
PS. the scouts must have been checking out the front drum before settling on the middle one. Once I locked the bees out on the first day, between smoking, a lot of bees were checking it out. There must have been some leftover pheromones in the hole. So I guess that drum could also be a swarm trap in the near future:)