How to collect honeybees in a box

Collecting bees into a box is as simple as it sounds but it’s only done for swarms. When bees swarm – which is most often in late spring and early summer – they clump together on walls and surfaces and sometimes hanging from bushes and trees. 

A cardboard box, a nucleus box or an artificial hive is used and placed underneath the swarm. The swarm is then banged off, dropped in or cut into that box which is often then sealed with a sheet to take them away, usually by a beekeeper or a specialist company that deals with bees.

This is quite a simple process and removing a swarm of bees should be done quite quickly to avoid those bees settling into a void somewhere in your building. If you’ve got a swarm of bees on your property, you need to try and get someone to remove those bees as soon as you can (ideally within 24-hours).

While moving the bees with a box is quite straight forward, it should be done by someone who knows what they’re doing.

We were asked to remove a swarm of bees from a tree by a customer because he was concerned that they might move into his chimney. The customer had heard that bees had been in that chimney in the past. Within a few hours, we had removed that swarm into a box and taken it away. The removal process took an hour with the right equipment.

The equipment you would need to do a swarm removal is quite basic. You can use a bee skep which is a basket and what beekeepers historically used to house their bees.

You can use a box or a nucleus box (nuc box) or an artificial hive or anything to home the bees temporarily whilst you transport them to something more permanent. You also need a sheet of material, even a bed sheet will do to cover the box to transport them. Don’t use plastic, material allows the bees to breathe and doesn’t cut off the airflow.

Once you bang the bees off the branch or cut the branch off into that box you would move away from the box and where the bees were and any other flying bees will then fly onto that box if you have got the queen. You will know if you have got the queen if the bees start flying around that box itself. They will follow her. The sheet is then put over the box and you can transport them away to their more permanent home.

This is a chargeable service by Beegone but beekeepers are always happy to collect swarms and usually for free.