Life is interesting when your friends know you are a beekeeper.
I got a call at work (yes, I work a real job, besides the fun I have farming) from a friend this past Monday.
“I have a buddy at work that has a bunch of bees in his house. I told him you might take care of them.”
So, I have him give the guy my number.
He called me and confirmed that he had honey bees somewhere inside his house or in the crawlspace under the house.
I told him to call me when he got home – after he confirmed that the bees were still there. (swarming bees don’t hang around their initial point of descent – it’s temporary until the scout bees find a “suitable” home for her majesty, the queen)
He called me back stating that the bees were in fact, there, so I headed out to Williamstown, KY to capture a swarm. I had my yougest son (10) and my buddy that called me (he thought it would be fun).
When I got there, the bees were coming and going through an opening at the bottom of the vinyl siding on the house, where his front porch/deck was.
I shined my flashlight into the gap and noticed that the bees were not going up inside the walls, so I asked him how to get into the crawlspace – he took a piece of siding off and removed some plywood. I crawled in and headed to where the front porch was.
Sure enough, there was a ball of bees about 14″ in diameter hanging on the sub-floor between 2 floor joists. There was another one in the corner of the floor joist and the sub-floor where they meet the exterior wall, but it was much smaller – maybe 5 – 6 inches in diameter. probably about 30,000 bees…
I had a small cardboard, portable “NUC” (a half-hive that only has room for 5 frames instead of the standard 8 or 10 frames in a full sized hive) with a frame of honey on one side and a frame of drawn wax comb on the other side. I held it under the ball of bees, and with by bee brush, I brushed that big ball o bees into the box – there were so many bees, it knocked the box right out of my hand! I oicked it up and started brushing again, until I had almost all of the bees on sub-floor swept into the box – I also got the smaller ball of bees.
of course, there were probably 6 – 10 thousand bees that either fell out of the box, or missed the box during my sweeping actions. So, I set the box down and crawled out and unzipped my beesuit ( it was in the 80′s outside and concentrated effort makes me sweat anyway).
I stood there giving the home owner an update on progress and cooling off, while my buddy was walking around in a beesuit checking things out. My son had gone in with me and was holding the flashlight for me under the house, and he didn’t want to take off his hooded veil because, like me, he had gotten stung through the bee suit! Needless to say, he would not be assisting me on my next venture under the house and he made this very obvious as he climbed into the van and shut the door!
After about a 5 – 10 minute cool-down, Iwent back in and repeated the process. I did this 3 more times in all, and when I was finished, there were still 3 or 4 thousand bees left. I hated to leave them, but there was no way I could get the rest of the bees, since it was getting dark.
On the way home, I thought buying a “bee vacuum” an some queen pheromone, or some lemongrass essential oil (my wife has some for her products, but I’d have to ask and them replace it anyway)…
I have the hive set up and it’s been there all week – of course, it’s been raining, so they wouldn’t choose to leave until after te weather clears, anyway. Today will be the big test – sunny and in the 70′s. I’m hoping to get in there today and find a good, laying queen. if not, I will be re-queening that hive tomorrow…
It was a lot of work, but the bees were free – and now the man’s young daughter (who is allergic to bees) doesn’t have to be afraid…