Allen Dick wrote:
>Blowers
>
>Blowers come in may guises, from the home vacuum cleaner in reverse
>mode  to the Huskvarna and Stihl two stroke 'big mothers' that approach
>200 MPH air speeds.  We use the latter, but seldom turn them up all
>the way.  The top speeds are for partly empty combs on cool days --
>days when the bees should actually be left alone, but there are a
>few boxes that have to be cleaned out and we are 60 miles from
>home on a Friday afternoon.
 
I haven't had any experience with the big "commercial" type blowers but
having seen them in some of the catalogs I think their price puts them
out of the practical realm of a hobbyist  or sideline beekeeper.
 
>We don't turn them up because if we do, the bees are blown up in our
>faces instead of thru the top bars, and there is a risk of damaging
>bees with too much force.
>
>BTW, we blow from the bottom of the box to the top, since the frames
>can be moved easily by their bottoms -- like leafing thru a book.
>
>Under some circumstances, we blow down through a box that is still
>on the hive before removing it.  Temperature must be considered when
>doing this.
 
My beekeeping mentor and I have an empty 55 gallon drum nearby our bees
and we just set the super on end on top of the drum.  That lets us blow
bees out from both the top and the bottom.  I've found that their are
always some stragglers when we blow from just one side of the box.  If
we blow from both the top and the bottom we tend to get almost all of
the bees out of the box.
 
>Leaf blowers are a cheap and ubiquitous alternative to specialised
>bee blowers.  They are adequate for most (95% of all) jobs, and we
>carry one as back up blower for when our main blowers fail.  They are
>not as rugged as the big ones, but they do last well -- even being
>trucked around the country.
 
I have a "weedeater" brand gas powered leaf blower (made by Poulan the
chainsaw company) that works very well for this purpose.  I bought it
brand new on sale at the local Walmart for less than $100.  I have a
large yard and really wanted it for its ability to vacuum up leaves
that have been blown in a corner and "mulch" them.  Then it dawned on
me to use it for the bees.  We use butyric anhydride to get the bees
down out of the super but we don't leave it on the hive forever.  It
moves most of the bees out and the blower does the rest.  That way we
don't get too much of the odor on our combs and probably blow most of
it out with the blower.
 
Next year I want to experiment with tipping.  I really like the idea of
avoiding the horrible smell of "bee go".  I'm not sure if Texas is the
greatest place in the world to try this since we tend to dry out in
July and stay that way until September.  Of course this year it might
have worked fantastically.  July and August were our wettest months of
the year so far and my bees are still bringing in much nectar.
 
>A blower is very useful if you misjudge how fast the bees will
>abandon your boxes and they are still full of bees when you are ready
>to load, or if there is a patch of brood in a super, and the bees
>have not left.
 
Another thing that I've noticed is that the bees tend to stay away from
the noise of the blower.  Has anyone else noticed this?