Back to the Drawing Board

Sometimes, it is best to just take a beat, and read, and think, and plan a little more.  Sure, there is a time for action, but sometimes, you gain insight by putting the chutzpah on hold and plotting things through a little better.

The books talk a lot about trap-outs, and how they work.  Essentially, you take a length of screen wire and make a cone out of it, creating a one-way door for the bees.  The bees come out of the wall, but they can't get back in. To help encourage them to find their place in a new home, you place a box right next to the cone, and they magically adopt that box as their home.

That is what the books say.  The details of how you do it are a little indistinct.  So you go to the internet, the source of all knowledge. Magically, like Rule 37, if it exists, you can buy it.  A site called Brushy Mountain Bees sells a cone for you.  Already made.  And they are cheap, selling for $2 each.

And then you add in the 14 dollars for shipping.

Never mind.  You decide to make it yourself.

A few more hours of clickbait internet surfing later, (Kylie Minogue meets with a Belgium prince, and you'll never believe what happens next!) you have done all the damage you can do.  The cone, you discover, has to be set over the entrance, and has to be the size of a bee at the end.  You can also make a double cone, if your bees find the way back in to your first cone. (With an escape hatch at the bottom so that the bees will enter, climb down, and exit, never finding the interior cone.

Do you (click one):

Make a cone out of fiberglass screen,

or,

Make a cone out of aluminum screen,

or,

Make a cone out of 1/8" hardware cloth

or,

Bite the shipping bullet and buy the cone from Brushy Mountain Bee