I'll Take Pad Thai and Bees to Go, Please

Got a call from Steve over at the Ventura County Fired Dept in Camarillo, about a swarm that had taken up residence next to a Thai restaurant. The owner followed up with a call to me too, begging me to come get the bees. She told me she'd make me lunch, so we settled on some chicken & shrimp pad thai in exchange for driving out there to get the swarm.

Here's what it looked like from a distance:



Talk about easy! Right there at about chest level... piece of cake. I took a closer look...



Gotta love it when they're this easy. I stuck a box underneath, shook the branch, closed it up and put it in the truck to go home. Ann, the owner, came out with my Pad Thai (unfortunately she hadn't held the peanuts as I asked, and I'm allergic, but oh well) and I was on my way.

It was such a small swarm I put them in a 5-frame nuc. A check today seems to indicate all's well; I won't actually open them up for two weeks, to give them a chance to settle in.

One Hive Leaves; Another Served Up On (or Under) a Table

After harvesting a full super of sage honey from my strongest (of only two) Carniolan hives, I placed the empty super back on the hive for them to clean up. Bad news is, this resulted in two things; an invasion of ants, and evidently some serious robbing by the other bees in the yard. The unfortunate result was that the Carni's absconded, leaving an empty hive. I broke it down and stored the frames, only to get a call from a trailer-park manager that a swarm had set up on their premises and they needed it removed.

The location was in Ventura, which is too much of a drive to do a free swarm removal. As it happens I was heading in that general direction for another reason today, so I told him I'd stop by and get the swarm, but I'd have to charge $100. Still way more affordable than an exterminator, and he was fine with that.

When I got there, here's what I found:



I suspected that this swarm had started to set up shop and create a hive, as they'd been there for 4 days and seemed to be behaving like a hive. Lots of waggle dancing going on, and when I looked underneath, just a boatload of bees.



I put a cardboard box underneath and slowly pushed a paint scraper along the underside of the table, causing a good portion of the bees to fall into the box. I closed that box up; obtained another box from the park manager, and repeated the exercise with as much of the remaining cluster as I could. I sealed them up, took them home, and dumped both into the previously abandoned deep hive body. To give them a running start, since we're closing in on a dearth here, I alternated frames; using four of the drawn-out comb frames from the Carni hive, and six fresh foundation frames. (I didn't like the looks of some of the other Carni frames, and in fact found wax moths and/or wax moth larva on three of them, which I set out for foragers to clean up).

As of tonight it seems the relocated bees have settled, so I'm fairly confident I got the queen. Time will tell.

An Easy Hive Cutout

I got a call a couple weeks ago from a very nice lady named Kim, who said a newly formed hive over her garage was becoming quite the tourist attraction in her neighborhood. She felt the hive needed to be removed, but was quite adamant about keeping the bees alive in the process. I assured her I could and would. I've started to shy away from cutouts, as I'm finding only about a 50% success rate in terms of the bees staying in their relocated home, but Kim's hive was very accessible and I was so impressed with her concern for the bees, I decided to do this one.

Here's what the hive looked like:



I set up a ladder and a makeshift platform to hold my homemade bee vacuum:



Then, I started vacuuming bees from the comb:



As I removed a majority of bees from each comb, I'd slice them from the stucco using my hive tool. Then I vacuumed off any leftover bees on each comb, and put the comb into a covered bucket.



The activity drew quite a crowd in the neighborhood, so I took the opportunity to give a little bee education to the kids, and let them taste some honey fresh from the comb. Note the amount of capped brood on the comb; I was actually able to show the kids all stages of larva and even some emerging bees.



Once I got all the comb cut away, I had to chase after the holdouts inside the light fixture that was hidden under the hive. I didn't want to miss the queen, and I was worried she might have skedaddled up into a hiding place in the fixture.



It was nearly dark by the time I finished, so I left the vacuum box filled with bees in my truck until morning. Bright and early I rubber-banded most of the comb into frames, loaded the frames into a nuc, and took the nuc and bees over to the Las Flores Community Garden in Thousand Oaks where I have another hive. That's where I opened up the vacuum box and shook them into the nuc. Here's their new home:



Notice the tin pie pans under each leg of the hive stand? I had to put those there because the very first night this poor hive was inundated with ants. So, I put oil (it's an organic garden, so I used corn oil, although at home I often use old motor oil) into the pans, and the ants can't access the hive. All's well; it appears I definitely got the queen, because they're doing fine, bringing in pollen and doing all the regular bee stuff.

I'll end this post with a look at an absolutely humongous hive that I declined to remove. I would have needed three of the vacuums I have at least, and the comb was gigantic. Weird to see it completely exposed in a tree about 15 feet off the ground, but that's where it was. Here's a look; hope the size translates in these photos...

Cupola Cutout

Well, in spite of the imminent threat of rain I headed over to Newbury Park today around 4:30PM to remove a hive that had ensconced itself in a cupola (an architectural flourish to add character to the roofline; in this case basically a little triangular projection above a window).

The homeowner, a former fire chief and a current carpenter, was a huge help. He built a platform for me to stand on, and had already removed all the nails from the sheeting on the front of the cupola. Plus, he had an extension ladder in place. So, all I needed was:

- The bee vacuum (see my log removal video to view this in action)
- Hive tool (for cutting away comb)
- Smoker and additional smoker fuel
- Bucket with a cover (for the comb)
- Veil and jacket
- Thick rubber gloves
- Flashlight

I pulled away the sheeting, and here's what I saw:



Here's a closer view. Doesn't look like too big a hive from here, does it?



Suffice to say there's more than meets the eye. The hive was six combs deep, with a good-sized population hiding away from me on the opposite side of each comb. I started by smoking them thoroughly, although I have to say that this was an extremely docile hive throughout the procedure, even when my smoker petered out due to user neglect :-)

Anyway, after smoking I started vacuuming, and as I cleaned each comb up I'd reach in, cut it free, and carefully transfer it into a bucket. Each comb had a good mix of capped and open brood of various ages. You can see the multi-colored pollen on that foremost comb in the photo above; there was also a decent amount of stored honey--- all in all, a very healthy hive.

When I finished, here's how it looked:



I hurried home with a boxful of bees and a bucket full of comb, trying to beat the oncoming darkness and rain to get these gals hived. I strapped their brood comb into frames, like this:



I added some regular frames of foundation, and got them hived just as the rains started. As I write this it's really coming down; wind is howling, and absolutely pouring. I know there were some stragglers when I hived them; I'm sure they got caught by the rain and probably didn't make it into the hive. I scooped as many as I could by hand and put them in, and I made sure I didn't see the queen wandering around anywhere before I closed them up. Hopefully she's in there; you never can tell with a cutout, because there are inevitably a number of "leftover" bees and plenty of casualties. I never actually saw her, but I was careful to vacuum any "glumps" of bees in particular, thinking that they may be crowding around the queen. Time will tell.