Question -- why go through that much trouble to euthanize the hive? Why not just get a huge trash bag, bag up the entire colony, and then pump CO2 into it?
He mentions that that is another way to do it, the problem is you use dry ice to generate the CO2 and he doesn't know where to find that. I imagine that this process is not very simple; of course the dry ice goes on top and the cool carbon dioxide falls, but making sure that it pools and collects and fills the hive requires enclosing the hive from the bottom up which sounds nontrivial when it is that swarmy. I think the bottom is enclosed so one would get those huge things of plastic wrap and wrap around the sides over and over? Similar idea though. And then you would just need to know how long to wait for them to suffocate.
it didn't look like he went through very much effort at all to euthanize with Ajax though.
Some hives have enclosed floors. But modern hives, at least in the UK, now have a mesh floor. Which is there to reduce the numbers of a parasite, varroa. The mesh allows the parasite to fall out of the hive.
That's an interesting question. I'm not sure how you would pump CO2 into a bag and kill a colony. I'm not sure it's an accepted process for doing that. Maybe there's a chance you might accidentally euthanise yourself.
I imagine at the start of the process, he was hoping to just kill the queen, and the entire colony would survive. In that case the other bees would replace the queen, with an emergency queen cell, if this was to happen the queen would probably be as aggressive as the previous generation.
But he mentions that he intends on introducing a queen himself. In which case, I would have thought the colony would calm down.
But I have no idea how much by, because I've never been in this situation.
Put a big trash bag over the entire box, tie it up at the bottom, punch a small hole and put a hose from a cheap CO2 tank, ozone generator (also cheap), car exhaust, what have you?
If they were aggressive invasive bees wouldn't it make more sense to just kill all of them rather than replace the queen? Those aren't the sort of bees we want flying around our neighborhoods.
His method probably released hundreds of aggressive bees into the air everywhere , whereas if you bag it up they can't go anywhere.
Yes, the queen dictates the mood of the hive but it happens in 2 ways- her genetics, and her pheromones. It can take over a month before the mood of the hive would change after a re-queening. Even with a queen replacement, there are thousands of these aggressive bees already in there. With nearby kids and horses, and the incredible behavior of this hive, I don't blame him for deciding that the responsible step is euthanizing the whole colony.
it didn't look like he went through very much effort at all to euthanize with Ajax though.