These bees had found a great archway over a driveway - covered with bougainvillea in full bloom. The bougainvillea was trained over the archway and looked great... the problem was that the vines became so large and heavy over time they pulled the decorative trim off the stucco wall. Once the trim was off, the bees had a great space to move into. The owner did not want to open up the stucco to remove the complete hive so I opted for the "Bait Hive" removal method.
I placed the wooden plank over the opening and attached the bee escape to the plank. The bee escape is a long wire mesh cone that tapers down to the width of a pencil eraser (or slightly larger). Bees can exit, but not reenter. The white box sitting on top of the archway is my 5-frame nuc box. This was a large hive and took approximately six weeks to remove the bees from the archway. When the job was completed I backed my truck up under the archway and jumped into the back to reach the nuc box - - good thing that I didn't try to stand on the ladder - It caught me by surprise how heavy the box had become. It was so full the bees actually chewed a larger entrance hole in the cardboard box to accommodate the number of bees.
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