To cut out, or not to cut out?

Posted by Jon on Aug 25, 2010 in Swarms & Nests | 0 comments

The evenings are drawing in now and our bees are making the most of the final pollen of the season to make honey and provide stores for the winter ahead. But I’m still getting bee calls – some saying that the swarm only descended a couple of weeks ago!

If the house owner is relaxed about the bees being there, then to me it’s simple, leave them to over-winter and hope that they make it through. Then I’ll revisit in the spring and remove the colony before it starts to grow again. To move a colony now feels very wrong as it would put the colony at serious risk of not having the stores in place for winter. When they should be having a final push for their winter stores, they would be trying to sort out the new hive and the vital winter stores may not be gathered.

But what about the home-owners that aren’t so relaxed? With a couple of visits recently, I’ve very much felt that the home owner was asking me how to kill the bees rather than how to save them. When I’ve explained how difficult it is to over-winter, they’ve asked if they removed the covering stones in December would that kill the colony, or if they fill in the entry hole in January is that the best time to stop the colony growing? Obviously I haven’t answered these questions which go against every bone in my body, but I have driven away hoping that common sense would prevail and that they will call me in the springtime (and that a couple of good sting may head their way)!

In some cases, where the bees are posing a threat to the family, then I’ve had to cut out later than I would want to as the next call is to the exterminator. I’ll be interested to see how these do although I’m not holding out great hope. I’ll feed them well over the winter period but I just think that disturbing a colony this late is not a good thing.

I’d be really interested to hear of any experiences of late cut-outs….