I checked on the cluster when I got home and they were gone! I did see that they had started to draw out a bit of comb from the makeshift top. There was a lot of activity around the box but I could not tell if it was just other bees robbing or if the bees actually moved in. I waited for dusk and tried to get a hook around the rope. After several attempts and upsetting many bees I got the box free. It was heavy and again struggling against gravity I got the weight of the box under control. I then hung it about 5 feet below the landing spot of the original swarm. The last I looked there were some stragglers looking for the hive above. The picture is dark and grainy however you can see a few bees guarding the entrance. When I get the bees down after a couple of days I will do a “news-paper” combine and add a feeder.
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Worked another extraction this weekend for a local building management company and every time I am on one I learn to be a bit more efficient and wanted to share my list. If there is the opportunity to make a small hole first when starting and extraction this is ideal. So the trick is to annoy the aggressive bees and get them out a small hole and grab them with the vacuum right away. This time around I broke through the drywall with a small hole and kept banging on the ceiling to annoy them. I then opened a hole about 6 inches square. This really helped as the aggressive bees rushed the opening and right into the vacuum. I did get stung on the finger once but was when lifting out some comb and I pinned the bee between my finger and some comb.