Taking a hoover you buy from bunnings and turning it into your Bee-Vacuum, here is how:
We bought this hoover here from bunnings to have a play and see how we could turn it into a bee vac as easy as possible. The following steps will show you our design and how we got there:
FROM THIS:
TO THIS:
Not that this looks flash, but it seems to work
1. Remove the bottom plastic piece of the hoover and mark the middle of the vacuum, to prepare to drill the whole into it.
Use temporary aid such as gaffa tape to secure it in place, and liquid nails from bunnings does a great job and drying fairly fast.
3.Close up all ports of the vacuum's outside. This is not to prevent bees escaping the bee vacuum, rather to avoid anything crawling into the vacuum while you are working around the bees or not having vacuum in use for a while in a shed full of bees. This step is not necessarily mandatory, but i thought it probably be wise to close it off.
4.Get yourself a 30 litre bucket and drill a whole centered in the middle. Use the aluminum hoover bucket to guide you to get the proper alignment.
Same deal here again, drill the whole and stick a bit of metal flyscreen or mosquito netting underneath the lid. use liquid nails or similar and keep in place with sticky tape!
Sticky tape solutions! love them!!
6.Now drill a few 2-3mm holes into the bucket in a small area, which is used to optimize suction and air flow. In case you experience your vacuum is sucking to hard, killing the bees expose more holes, if you need to increase suction, cover those holes with a sticky tape / cloth tape
7.Softening the landing area. This part ensures bees don't hit the hard bucket edge. This is still a bit experimental, so come back for updates to see if we modified this bit at a later date. Basically, get yourself a sponge, and either leave it in its plastic rapping or enclose the sponge in plastic, to avoid having bees get stuck on the surface. you literally just want them to have a softer landing in the bucket, that's all.
8. Now putting it all together, close the bucket, place the aluminium hoover bucket on top.
Ensure you close off the hoover suction hole with the custom made plug and strap the hoover down onto the bucket with the elastic hooks. Probably get new ones, as my old ones on those pictures are about to disintegrate into dust.
10. Please ensure that during operation you keep the suction hole blocked with the white custom made plug to allow the suction to happen via the bucket and being able to hose up the bees into the bucket. Open and close the little drilled holes by opening up or closing / covering the suction holes in the plastic bucket with the tape until the optimal airflow has been achieved.
11. Once you are done sucking up all the bees, switch off the hoover and quickly relocate the plug from the hoover down to the bucket to avoid any escape-bees!
Then seal and transport the bucket and relocate them to your desired location.
Happy Swarm season!
Please let us know if this information had been useful on your journey to your first set of bee hives!
Feel free to browse to our complimentary Youtube channel which goes hand in hand with this blog.
Happy beekeeping,
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