Anyone know much about bees?

Darkginger

I found a 'natural' bee hive at the base of a stone wall in our field the other day. Does anyone know if there's a way of moving this to a man-made hive, or perhaps another way of making use of it? It is most definitely bees and not wasps, and seems fully populated. I'm a home mead-maker, and it would be just great if I could manage to extract honey from this in one way or another, without upsetting the bees, or getting stung!

On the other hand, should I just leave them alone to get on with it?

vcsggl

Are you sure they are honey bees and not bumble bees? There's a small bumble bee that usually makes the nest at the base of walls or hedges - they have a white tail so can be easily identified. If they are honey bees you could try to move them into a hive but you'd need to dismantle the wall and even that will only work if you move the queen. Unless you are well used to handling bees it can be extremely difficult to spot the queen - like so many things once you've seen her it's easy to see how different she is from the workers but finding her in the first place is a whole different game!

You'd probably be better leaving them where they are and buying the honey for the mead from Lidl!! Far cheaper and easier than any honey you're likely to harvest from your wall bees!!

George

vcsggl

One other thing to bear in mind Darkginger - if you do get around to moving your wild honey bees you must move them more than 2 miles from the original home! Although bees are very good at finding their way home when they go out each day they get very confused if the hive is moved - they go back to where it was. So, if you manage to get the bees, along with the queen, out of their nest in the wall and put them in a hive then unless the hive is more than 2 miles away from the wall they'll all go back to the wall! So what you have to do is to put them in a hive, take the hive at least 2 miles away, leave them there for about a week and then you can bring them back to your own place.

The other thing is that it's getting a bit late in the season now to be moving them, you wouldn't get any honey from this year, what ever honey they've got in their nest in the wall they'd need for food over the winter.

Goog Luck!!

George

bertie1

Ask a local beekeeper to move them for you, & join your local beekeeping & learn how to handle them