Tree cut out

[rockdoc]

Some advice please from you good folks.Had a call from a local charity run woodland about a honey bee colony hived in an old Ash tree. On inspection, it appears to be in an advanced state of decay (you can rock it with one hand!) They are keen to rescue the colony and re-home it elsewhere (probably my apiary) As its by the main footpath through the woods it needs to be done with care. So any advice on how best to proceed (the bees are just below the mushroom provided I can load the pic)?
Ok, file too big so the tree is about 12 foot tall consisting of a trunk and two main branches which have been loped off. So think of a big Y, rotten at the base. It can be lowered by ropes on other trees to gently bring it down, and then I was going to chainsaw the occupied bit off and reinstate in its original orientation back at the apiary and leave it till spring wrapped in a warm thermal blanket- how does that sound?

 

[Jed D]

If you can get them down in one chunk of tree , sounds like the best option !!!!
Then get them out in the spring... from ground level...

Click link ,Scroll down and look at the pics... Don't do this to the tree !!!!!!

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=27892

 

[enrico]

Just make sure very one is suited and booted. One mistake and everyone is at risk! Good luck, I reckon the way you suggest has to be the way to go
E

 

[VEG]

Sounds like you have it covered.

 

[galileo]

Do you know for certain how far down the trunk the cavity extends? A bit of judicious drilling might be advisable in advance of chainsaw action, if not, it being markedly easier to plug a little hole than to reseal a saw gash. Other than that, good plan and all the best!

 

[rockdoc]

Thanks everyone. No, I'm not sure how big the cavity is but by the state of the base it could be large. My one fear however we do this is that the main part of the tree will simply disintegrate. So I intend to belt it with straps to try and minimize this. Yes, everyone will be booted and suited. We are also getting permission to close the path to the public and a fellow beek with a chainsaw license will do the cutting. I'll let you know how we go, and try and get some smaller file size pics to load up.
Cheers

 

[rockdoc]

Update on the fate of this tree colony is we have managed to get the limb off intact, and its now in the apiary. Unfortunately, the only space we could get it to is a a bit too close to some of my hives from the hygiene point of view. Not exactly what I would call quarantine! However, I'll take the risk and hollow out the top in spring and let the queen move up into a brood box. After that I plan to have a go at fully emptying the centre core and slicing up the stump to make a sort of tree hive along the lines of a Warre hive. I'll keep you all posted on progress. Note the pollen in the last pic (taken yesterday). Sorry I'm unable to upload the shots of the stump in the apiary, so these will have to do until I can work out how to compress the files!

 

[Tom Bick]

Impressed how did you lower the stump down to the ground safely as looks rather large. It will be nice to see the photos of it in your apiary and any future updates. Good job well done getting this far.

 

[derekm]

Some advice please from you good folks.Had a call from a local charity run woodland about a honey bee colony hived in an old Ash tree. On inspection, it appears to be in an advanced state of decay (you can rock it with one hand!) They are keen to rescue the colony and re-home it elsewhere (probably my apiary) As its by the main footpath through the woods it needs to be done with care. So any advice on how best to proceed (the bees are just below the mushroom provided I can load the pic)?
Ok, file too big so the tree is about 12 foot tall consisting of a trunk and two main branches which have been loped off. So think of a big Y, rotten at the base. It can be lowered by ropes on other trees to gently bring it down, and then I was going to chainsaw the occupied bit off and reinstate in its original orientation back at the apiary and leave it till spring wrapped in a warm thermal blanket- how does that sound?

the key thing is plenty of kingspan on the top sealed to tree.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

the key thing is plenty of kingspan on the top sealed to tree.

Wood is a cr@p insulator

these will have to do until I can work out how to compress the files!

Just open them in microsoft picture manager (just double click on the saved file and it should automatically open in that) edit, then compress

 

[derekm]

Wood is a cr@p insulator

....

woods a great insulator if you can find and apply at least 7 times the thickness and dont have to carry it.
Wood as insulator is only good for bees in trees nests

 

[rockdoc]

The stump was cut and lowered by a professional tree surgeon and fellow beekeeper. It was a precision operation given the weight of wood, and went very smoothly. I' haven't bothered with kingspan on this stump as there is about 10 inches of wood above the nest (I think), but I may put a piece on shortly just as backup.
As soon as I can work out how to compress the image I'll pop it on.

 

[Hebeegeebee]

woods a great insulator if you can find and apply at least 7 times the thickness and dont have to carry it.
Wood as insulator is only good for bees in trees nests

It's a tree, so why the desperate need for foil-backed polystyrene?

 

[Hebeegeebee]

I'll take the risk and hollow out the top in spring and let the queen move up into a brood box.

Have you ever tried driving the bees by drumming?

 

[Fatbee]

Rock doc,

How agitated did the bees get when you had the chain saw going? I've got a colony in a dead ash tree (one of mine that swarmed!) but have to date left them to it because it's quite a task. Like you're idea of using the bough as a hive though!

 

[rockdoc]

Surprisingly calm actually during the chainsaw chop. Even when we misjudged where the base of the nest was and chopped off about 6 inches of crystallized comb! Temp was about 14 degrees and yet they remained calm and we lost very few bees. Today they are very active with good numbers, and bringing in bright orange pollen. My instinct tells me we have a bigger nest than I first thought, so fingers crossed to see them through winter.

 

[itma]

…
As soon as I can work out how to compress the image I'll pop it on.

You're looking for the wrong tool!

What you need to do is to change the resolution - drop it to something less than 2k pixels for the long dimension and it should upload.
JPEG (.jpg) files are already compressed. (Some programs do allow you to adjust the jpeg compression when you save a version under a new name.) But reducing the number of pixels (dots) in the image is the simplest way of reducing the file size. (Though you'd need a Windoze person to tell you which menu to look on.)

It would be a good idea to begin by 'cropping' the image so that you trim away other surrounding but irrelevant detail. (A bit like a retrospective zooming in.) "Fill the frame" with the important stuff! Cropping alone will reduce the number of pixels in your image, helping you with the slimming task!

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Most picture editors have the facility to compress an image for emails, web pages etc

 

[itma]

Most picture editors have the facility to compress an image for emails, web pages etc

Emyr, the point of my previous post is that "compression" is a technical term for something other than Rockdoc's requirement.

He needs to be looking for a "resize" menu option (or something very much like that). And first, the 'crop' tool. But it is unlikely that any 'compression' option will suffice.
The forum upload restriction for .jpg and .jpeg files (the most likely format from a digital camera) is a maximum of 2000 pixels high and wide (and 1.91mb and 19.07mb of data respectively).
Resizing changes the number of pixels (and thus the data size). Varying the 'compression' changes only the data size (by varying the way it is encoded).


On the Mac, in the standard 'Preview' viewer/editor program, on the 'Tools' menu there is an option "Adjust size …" which is exactly what Rocdoc needs. The jpeg compression is adjusted at the time of exporting the image to disk, by means of a slide control labelled "Quality" - from best to least.
However, I'm not familiar with the details of the standard Windows image editor …

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Emyr, the point of my previous post is that "compression" is a technical term for something other than Rockdoc's requirement.

No - I knew exactly wgat I was saying - open a picture up in the default microsoft opicture manager whatever software and in the edit menu it gives you two options - resize or compress - go into the compress sub menu and it gives you the options to compress for documents, web pages or emails select one of those press OK and job done - for eg a 20KB file reduced to 3KB, not interested in whether it's pixels ,pixies or leprecauns - does it all for you in one step - all you have to do then is resave it. I've got office 2003 here at the moment - it's similar but not the same on office 2013 but my laptop is out in Africa at the moment so I can't check.
Uploaded hundreds of photographs for my blog by simply doing that and the same for on here