Bees by the front door

Posted by Jon on Aug 2, 2010 in Swarms & Nests | 0 comments

My third bee adventure last week found me heading out to Tom and Helen who had returned to their second home to find that bees had taken up residence close to their front door. They had been there for a few weeks, entering and leaving by a hole in the rendering.

This bee removal really bought home to me the beauty of my Heath Robinson beevac. In the past, I would have been talking about cones and leaving a hive with a queen and brood in situ to entice the bees into over a matter of weeks. The beevac gets away from this, enabling the removal to be done and dusted in a matter of hours. I’ve pondered over which the bees prefer – a short sharp shock and then a good run in to winter retaining the current queen, or a slower transfer with less chance to build up for winter and sacrificing the current queen and brood? In the end, the health of the colony is what every bee works towards so as this can be achieved with the beevac and a swift removal to pastures new, I feel this is a reasonable modern alternative to older methods.

So back, to Tom and Helen’s with their bee problem. The inside of the wall had been plasterboarded so we weren’t sure what hole the bees had found to live in. All became clear as I removed a stone (stained yellow on the bee-side!) to reveal a small alcove on the inside of the wall which has possibly held a timber joist at some point. It was only about 40cm deep x 18cm wide x 15cm high with a bit of a dog-leg in the middle, so it was clear that the bees needed a larger home – I’m fairly certain they would have swarmed at some point soon so the rehoming may have been quite opportune.

(click to enlarge)

The bee removal was relatively straightforward although cramped. The only difficulty was that being the standard French construction of two stone faces with rubble centre, there were several voids above and around the nest. This meant that the bees would disappear when the vac was used and only come back when the vac was out of the hole. Eventually, we left them to regroup whilst we had lunch which worked a treat. With one final hour-long hoovering session I had 1 box of buzzing bees and a few healthy combs with brood and honey – it was time to take the colony to its new home.

(click to enlarge)

We’ve left the hole open for the moment so that the ants and wasps can remove any final traces of honey, Tom will then seal it up in a few weeks time.

Thanks to Tom and Helen for looking after me so well – it was great to have such an interested audience. I’m over the moon to hear that we may have a new beekeeper in our midst next year as the more of us that can help the bees, the better!