Cone Trap - Hardware Cloth

It makes sense.  If bees can get back into the cone the way that they got out of it, you need to change the cone.  The pokey entrance was not enough to dissuade (or you decided, like I did, to try the combination first) and you reinforce the cone with hardware cloth ($18 at the hardware store)

The concept: the outside cone gives the bees coming back in an entrance.  But at the base, they also have an exit, so they don't find the opening at the tip of the interior cone.

Note the total lack of bees
congregating around the entrance.

I am not sure how this is supposed to work.  Because it doesn't.  The bees go straight through the cone on the outside, and climb back in the cone on the inside.  The cone-within-a-cone serves no purpose.  Meanwhile, your box of bees, with a frame of brood, is getting no attention from the bees you are trying to trap.  So they are very actively NOT working to raise a new queen, because they already have a hive, and a queen, thank you very much.

So you have wasted a week.  You have wasted another can of expanding foam sealer ($7).  You have killed off all of the eggs in the frame you stole from the other hive. (What a waste.  Seriously.) 

So since the holes are too big, and there is no way to retro-fit it, you will start again.  Cutting away the whole mess, you pull apart the pieces you have used, keeping small cones and long cones and discarding the pieces of foam. (Meanwhile, the angel on your right shoulder begins to complain that you are letting pieces of foam fall without picking them up.  So you stop and do that...)

You look for something to use to ensure that your form gets held, and that can be attached to the wall.

OK.  Tea balls.  Why not?

You cut a hole in half of the tea strainer.  And you use it, attaching it to the side of the building.  The bees immediately start emerging, and they don't come back inside.  (Well, at least for a day).

When they do, you take the other cone, salvaged from the previous, and cement it into place using the last of your second can of expanding foam sealer.

Are you getting tired of this?  Yeah.  Well, let's see how your box is doing.

I forget.  Did you...

Attach the box using ratchet tie-down straps?  Click here.

or did you attach the box using bungee cords?  Click here.