He ran a hose into

the hole to suck out as many bees as possible. At first he wasn’t wearing protective gear (!)

Once the bees got pissy about being disturbed, he stepped down and donned some protective gear

He estimates he removed about 5k bees, including (hopefully) the queen. Following removal, he inserted fiberglass insulation inside the hole and nailed window screen to seal the hole. If you zoom the pic, I think you can see the screen nailed to the tree. He said that when there’s so many bees, it’s harder to know if queen has been removed. But if action continues for two weeks, he assumes the queen is still there and he will return for a second removal effort.

He will take the 5k bees and place in his apiaries. I was able to place my hand within 1” of the top of box, and it felt warm, kinda like when you put your hand on top of skillet to feel if it’s warm enough.

Very interesting! I had no idea a vacuum hose was used to extract the bees.

So cool. I’m so glad they were relocated and not exterminated.

Great pictorial!

Wow... and I had a hard time removing a few paper wasps building a nest on the porch we're painting without resorting to spray..... while standing on the ground :-(

Wonderful to know of folks like him doing this for bees.

You would not believe how calm this man was. He said that between morning removal job and mine (afternoon) he was stung about 10x, and said that with a little Benadryl and he’d be sleeping like a baby. I forgot to mention he gave us a jar of his honey.