Building A Bee Sucking Vacuum

warning, there’s a little bit of cussing in these videos

I wouldn’t recommend any inexperienced person to go out messing with wild beehives, even if they’re typically good natured creatures. That doesn’t mean you can’t have some good fun watching someone else do things with our buzzing little friends though.

Here is the Bush Bee Man, aka Mark; a gentleman who is really learning as he goes. In this instance, he needs a more elegant way to rescue bees that have set up homes where people don’t want them.

Typically the process involved simply finding the hive and carefully grabbing chunks of it, along with mounds of bees, and placing them in a container. Mark had an idea to create a vacuum to collect the bees.

Here’s the first look at Mark’s contraption. While the thought of a vacuum sucking up the bees may sound catastrophic to our buzzing little friends, it should, in theory, be less harmful than being groped, smashed, covered in honey, and otherwise hurt in a more manual process.

An initial test run shows that the concept is sound, but it needs a little tweaking. For starters, it fell apart when he tried to pull the containing cage out. He also noticed the bees were absolutely covered in honey.

He returned to the concept to improve upon it with a few refinements. As you can see in this video, the bee sucking vacuum appears to be working pretty well.

I’ve been enjoying watching as the Bush Bee Man builds his business, learns, and shares the tricks of the trade. You should check out the rest of their videos for more.