Hobbies And Interests
Things You'll Need
Instructions
Mix honey, sugar and water together to make bee food. Use enough water so the mix is not thick, but watery, like hummingbird food.
Place the honey comb into the bottom section of the bee box. Pour the mixture of honey, sugar and water into the honey comb. You don't want sugar water all over the box. Fill only each hole in the honey comb.
Travel to the area where you will search for wild bee hives on a partly cloudy day. Wait for a bee to alight on a flower. Remove the lid from your bee box, and carefully swoop the box beneath the bee while moving the lid back on the box. If you succeeded, you now have a bee in your bee box.
Remove the partition of your bee box, allowing the bee access to the honey comb. Watch the bee and listen. It should stop buzzing around and feed after a short while. If it does not feed, release it and try to catch another bee. If none of the bees feed, adjust the sugar, honey and water mixture.
Release your bee after it has fed on the mixture. Watch where it flies. Don't lose track of it, because it is headed back to the wild bee hive.
Wait for the bee to return to your honey box. Keep track of the time it takes for the bee to leave the box and then return to the box. This time correlates to your current distance from the hive. After the bee has made several trips to and from the box, and you have watched it fly away each time, you should have a good idea of the hive direction.
Walk in the direction you observed the bee fly. Keep an eye out for dead trees and trees with openings and holes in their trunks. Watch for bees coming into and out of a tree, and listen for buzzing. If you find a tree that has bees flying in and out of it, you have found the wild bee hive.