Our office has a swarm that moved into the ceiling/roof space. Normally I would leave them but they are going inside the building.now and the are located right at the bathroom door, so I have gotten stung a few times.
I can get them out easily enough (I dont want to kill the hive). But I would really like to keep them and put a hive at our farm. these are honey bees of some kind.
What I am curious is if there is a way to force them to swarm and be able to capture them? I cannot rip apart the building inside as it is the entire office that would need to move. the only entrance is a little space where the wall meets the roof, which complicates things.
Is this a possible task?
second option is just get them to swarm their way out of there without killing them.
thanks for any input. Excuse the picture, doesnt show the scale. there are usually 100 or so flying around the entrance. when poked, the ceiling vibrates. sounds like thousand, but no idea. feeling the vibrations on the ceiling I guess a good 1x2 meters
I think you need to identify and capture the queen, and move her to a new hive slowly, so that they follow. and move some honeycomb with eggs across too… I’ve seen it a few times on YouTube. Does not look easy without some destruction.
Urodacus is correct. You need to move the queen. Which looks like some tiles would need to be removed. By someone wearing a full bee kit to avoid being stung. Because they’ll get angry that their home is being violated by some giant.
The good thing is if you can remove the queen you could put her in a hive and get your own honey. If. It all comes down to if.
