Started out my day off before first light screening in the entrance/exits on this pecan that fell last year when the San Antonio river got out of its banks. At one time this hollow tree was completely under water and I was sure the hive drowned but after the water receded they were still alive somehow... As soon as the temps permitted I began by chaining up to the small end of the tree so I could pull it away from the trunk as I cut down to the comb with my stihl.
I made the first cut several feet from the known entrance and ended up being a few feet from the end of the comb.
Several cuts later I had got within about 6" of the comb on both ends of the hive. I boarded the ends up with plywood to keep the hive and queen in. I went to the shop and brought the skid loader back to move the log full of bees to a spot I wanted to start working them.
I stood the log up, removed the plywood, screwed a bottomboard with a 4" hole in it over the hollow in the log, a deep brood box with 10 frames with foundation as well as a second deep broodbox for extra space as the bees absconded. The dark lid it actually the top of my bee vacuum I use as it has a screened bottom that keeps the queen from escaping when I open the lid to allow the smoke to draw as I cold smoke the vertical log like a chimney.
Put some 2x4's on the log to stabilize it as the ends were not real square.
As the bees absconded they overflowed thru the queen excluder. These bees responded well to the smoke and absconded in about 2 hours. As they began to fan at the entrance I knew I had the queen in my broodbox.
I took them off of the log that evening, and left them until late yesterday evening to let them clean up any of the honey and pollen they had stored. I moved them to the house last night after dark and put a feeder in the empty top brood box so they had a little help as the weather was going to be wet and cold today keeping foraging to a minimum. I will mention that Texas is considered to be an Africanized state and I'm my experience the wild bees down here seem to be about 50/50 Africanized. If you get to work a real docile wild hive you can almost bet the next hive down the road will be hard to handle mean aggressive africans. Proceed with caution when working established wild hives!
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