I Made a Bee Vacuum

Image: Andrew @ortofarms

The bee swarms of spring makes my inbox overfloweth with requests to remove bees from where they take up residence. Mostly I pass these jobs to a professional, but when a friend or acquaintance calls, and the job does not involve a lot of demolition work or hanging on the end of an extension ladder in a bee suit, I’ll say yes.

The process of removing an established hive involves opening up whatever they are in, cutting out the comb and then scooping up the bees that often will retreat to some out of the way spot. This last part, scooping up the bees, can be time consuming, frustrating and potentially dangerous if the bees are in a cranky mood.

For years I’ve resisted making a bee vacuum with the idea that it’s a crutch, somehow an excuse for bad technique. You can use a smoker to herd bees off the comb and, if you’re careful, once the queen is in the bee box the workers will follow. But if a tool makes things go more smoothly, why not give it a try?

There are a lot of different bee vacs that you can make or buy. I built mine using instructions by P. Michael Henderson. It consists of a box with an inlet for a shop vac and another tube to suck up the bees themselves. It has a removable bottom that you can put on top of another bee box once you’ve finished cutting out the comb and putting it in a box. Then you just remove the false bottom and the bees migrate back to their comb.

This past weekend I, along with my friends Andrew and Stephen, removed some bees from a backyard rotating compost bin (a common place bees like to settle in, by the way). We had to Sawzall the bin apart, unfortunately, and by the time we started removing the comb, most of the bees had settled into a hard to access corner of the bin. With the bee vac, we were able to quickly vacuum up those bees and get them into their new home.

Bee vac on top–box with relocated comb on bottom. Image: Andrew @ortofarms

Then, as usual, with this otherworldly creature, something unexpected happened. A cluster ended up on the pavement of the parking garage at the bottom of the apartment building we were removing them from. Somehow some had gotten smashed on the ground–maybe run over by a car? This attracted other bees. There were a lot of bees in the air too. Thankfully it was a holiday weekend and very few people were home and the bees were not at all aggressive. After pondering what to do in this not great situation, I pulled out the vacuum again and, after a few minutes, we had the rogue clusters vacuumed up and added to the box we wanted them in.

We came back after dark a day later and picked up the box and sent them to Andrew’s farm. I don’t have a lot of hope for this hive as it was very small and not very well established. But for this situation, the bee vac came in handy. Not only were we able to extract the bees from a tight spot but we were able to do so quickly and minimize the chance that they would go after people or pets in a dense urban location.

Mr. Grumpy Needs a Home

Have a place in your heart and home for a sweet little cat? Got a text from some cat rescue folks I met recently:

Grumpy, our foster, is very far from grumpy. We had been feeding him in an alley near our home and thought he was feral, but when we trapped him we discovered he is friendly! He is the sweetest boy; a true lap cat. He is about 2 years old (estimated). Grumpy would love nothing more than to spend his most of his time snoozing on his owner’s lap. He isn’t super frisky or active, but he does play with wand toys. He is friendly with other cats, non-aggressive. When confronted with aggression, he hides rather than fights back. So he would benefit from a calmer environment, maybe a single person or a childless couple, who spend a lot of time at home and want a best friend like Grumpy. He could be in a multi cat household as long as it wasn’t more than a couple cats. He would be an excellent companion. He is very loyal, loving and snuggly.

Grumpy was neutered at FixNation, received shots, flea treatment. will be given dewormer treatment, and he tested negative for FelV/FIV1. One notable characteristic is his distinct limp – it’s likely he had an old injury on his front left leg which caused this. He had x rays and exams by two vets- there are no visible or palpable fractures, and there is no muscle atrophy, meaning he still uses the leg. So even though he limps, it won’t require any further treatment. He gets around just fine.

He is a special cat who has been through a lot (likely dumped on the street by a previous owner) and he needs a wonderful home. For any potential adopters, we will want to do a home check either in person or by video, and have a meet-and-greet at our home so we can see how they interact with Grumpy. Any renters will need to provide landlord’s contact info so we can verify that pets are allowed. A few character references will also be required, or I can take your word for it if you’ve known someone a long time.

Send me an email at [email protected] if you’d like to adopt Mr. Grumpy and I’ll put you in touch with the rescue folks. If you can’t adopt Mr. Grumpy please send this post around.

A Litter Box Enclosure

With great hubris, allow me to toss my thinking cap into the realm of litter box design. I say hubris because only the cat that has the right to hold an opinion on the form, location and orientation of any litter box.

Commercially available litter boxes I believe, and I think our cat friends would agree, are made for the convenience of humans and the profits of the pet store industrial complex. Nobody talked to the cats about them. Most are too small and they’re all ugly. For years we’ve been using a 28-inch by 15-inch plastic storage bin. It worked fine from the cat’s perspective, but stray litter gets kicked around and behind the box, staining the bathroom floor and walls where the litter box resides. Frankly, it’s gross.

So I set about to make a larger box in which to house the same plastic tray. Essentially, I enclosed the plastic tray with an open topped box with a circle cut out so that cats won’t have to jump over the box (they are in their senior years). The tray fits inside an inner shelf to prevent loose litter from falling down into the bottom of the box.

I had grand visions of a neo-classical litter box temple housing the aforementioned tray but this vision got simplified in the interest of ticking off a long requested project on the honey-do list. My table saw and router table made fabrication quick and easy.

In some ways we’re the worst possible test for this litter box concept. We have two cats who have never had an indiscretion outside the litter box in the over 11 years we’ve had them. I’m aware that some cats react with horror and anger at an ever so slight change in litter box placement or aesthetics, as if even an errant moon beam hitting a slightly moved box will cause a fit of piss fueled revenge.

Should this box fail in any way I promise to be a good blogger and post an immediate update. Wish us luck.

Backyard and Backwards Beekeeping

I did a natural beekeeping Zoom talk for the Pasadena Public Library last month and they’ve posted it in the YouTubes for all to see. Fun fact: if you watch until the Q&A you’ll notice that my desktop computer is installed in our closet thus making my Zoom background a pile of folded sheets.

In the talk I give a brief intro to bee biology and then go over the way I keep bees here as taught to me by “backwards” beekeeping guru Kirk Anderson.

Beekeeping resources I mention during the talk:

Organizations/Websites
HoneyLove.org: local non-profit that provides hands-on education and resources for backyard beekeepers.

Principles of Beekeeping Backwards, a manifesto by Charles Martin Simon: https://www.beesource.com/threads/principles-of-beekeeping-backwards.365763/

Xerces society: for information on native bees and how to provide habitat. https://www.xerces.org/

YouTube
Backwards Beekeepers how-to videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL23D3FtWNSvrs1NDKjpDWolmVfDgcJTKX

Books
Save the Bees with Natural Backyard Hives: The Easy and Treatment-Free Way to Attract and Keep Healthy Bees by Rob and Chelsea McFarland

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Beekeeping by Dean Stiglitz and Laurie Herboldsheimer (believe it or not a good intro to natural beekeeping practices). Not to be confused with the Dummies Guide to Beekeeping.

Attracting Native Pollinators: The Xerces Society Guide, Protecting North America’s Bees and Butterflies by The Xerces Society (Author), Dr. Marla Spivak (Foreword).

Help I’ve got bees in my wall!
Henry Balding Balding’s Bees (213) 422-8444

Online Beekeeping Talk for Pasadena Grows

Hey all I’m doing an Zoom talk on beekeeping this Saturday March 6th at 10:30 AM PST. It’s freeeeeeeeeee and you can sign up here. I’m going to review basic honey bee biology and then get into the techniques of “Backwards” a.k.a. “natural,” a.k.a. “no-treatment” beekeeping, a.k.a. “bee-having” as the trolls call it. Hope to see some of you this Saturday!