Moving time

"Fellow Neighbor I regret to inform you that my roommate is allergic to bees. If you would kindly remove the killer bees. Thank-you"

That was the note I got taped to my front door. I had mentioned to my neighbor that I started keeping bees and asked him if he was allergic just a few days earlier. He said he wasn't and that he didn't have a problem with it; I guess his roommate does. I'm not mad though, we were planning on moving them Memorial Day anyway because there were just too many hives on the porch, after we combined thing 1 we had 4 hives..2 in polystyrene boxes and 2 in the swarm boxes.

I had asked my girlfriends parents and grandparents if they would mind but I really didn't feel comfortable with either option. Her grandparents have a bear problem and her young niece lives with her parents. So before I bugged her parents again I called my mentor, who lives just a few miles down the road, and asked if he would mind a few extra hives for a while; he said yes! So on Memorial Day the first thing we did was pack up our porch and head over to his house.

He wasn't there but his brother was and he helped direct things while Dingo and I set up shop. We combined the smaller swarm box with one of his hives and the larger swarm box with the bees in it from Penn Hills we put into a spare Wooden Deep with drawn comb. The other two hives were doing well by themselves but I'm anxious for our feeders to get here so we can put them on top to help with build up. My mentors bee yard is down a pretty steep hill and it took allot of effort dragging down the cement bricks to use as stands and the hives themselves. I always seem to do things the hard way! I hope to have some space in a local park for my apiary within a few weeks or once we put an offer in on a house to be able to move them to our own property.

Penn Hills Swarm

So many swarms! I could never have anticipated when I signed up for that swarm list a few weeks ago that I would have taken over 7 phone calls and removed 5 swarms. This latest one was one right on the border line of walking away from. Luckily it was close to our apartment and it was actually really close to my mentors house. 15 feet up in a tree and 8 feet out on a limb. Dingo came with me on this one and when we got there it took a good 30 mins of just thinking it over before we actually started on the removal. Bigger than a basketball. I'm a bit disappointed in myself - after all the thinking and assessing the risk I still went forward with it and even though it worked out, it was still too risky.

I like to think I've learned something from each swarm removal, this one I learned that its okay to say NO and walk-away (even though I didn't). Also that its better to do the removals at the end of the day, near night. This way the scouting bees and the ones flying are more likely to be with the original swarm. I got a call today (two days after the removal) telling me that a "jr football" sized swarm has accumulated on a branch near the other one. I'm going to call or check it out tomorrow hopefully they are just very clingy remnants and not another swarm.

Normally its not a good idea to sign up for multiple visits - especially with gas prices these days. One of the neighbors (who also kindly donated) is alergic and there are allot of young kids in the nieghborhood. So if there is still a concern I really want to address it. We'll see tomorrow!

Ventilation = Important

Some bad news I'm afraid. The swarm we got from the removal in Greensburg didn't do so good. The box we put them in was way too small and didn't provide enough ventilation for the trip home. It was really hot outside and although I didn't check them the first day I'm pretty sure they all died before we got home. When I did my day after inspection I first started to use my hive tool and scrape out some of the dead bees that were blocking the entrance - after about a fist full of dead bees I decided to open it up and found the majority..95% dead on the bottom.

I cleaned up as best I could then closed the box and put it in the dumpster. Its sad that I had to learn this way but I know I'll do my best to make sure it'll never happen again. That removal was really fun and we got to bring our friend along to share the experience but due to my lack of knowledge we lost it.

While I was cleaning up we had a few other situations to deal with. The bees from Thing 1 were "bearding" which means they were too hot on the inside and started to accumulate on the outside of the hive, I fixed that by propping the top of the hive open. I think the queen from Thing 1 came back because there was a pile of bees on the ground (alive) so I decided to scoop them up and put them in another mannlake swarm box temporarily. Everything was back to normal after that.

Resupply!

We have ordered more beekeeping supplies! Since we already used up all our hives and there is no end in site to the swarm calls, we figured we needed to restock. We placed an order for:

• 5 tops/5 bottoms to go with the rest of our medium boxes
  
• 5 top feeders
  

I'm excited to see how the top feeders work out. So far the bees do not seem to like my paper plate feeding method, though they do go for the jar Shark put together.

Week 1 Inspections

After about a week of having Thing 1 and Thing 2 on the porch, we decided to do our first hive inspection.

Thing 1

The bees had built only a minimal amount of comb and were hardly moving around. In addition, there were barely any bees on the frames. The majority of them seemed to be in the big clump where they feel when they were shaken into the hive. This pretty much confirmed our suspicion that Thing 1 was not doing too hot.

Shark managed to find the queen (I couldn't pick her out to save my life.) and catch here in the queen catcher. Unfortunately, when we tried to transfer her to the tube to be marked she squirmed her way out and flew away =x We are not exactly sure where she ended up. After that mishap, we were pretty much convinced that Thing 1 was now queen-less.

Thing 2

Overall, the bees looked great and were moving all over the place. They had already started to build up comb on multiple frames and a few of the cells were actually filled with something! Based on how much we had seen Thing 2 flying this past week, we we're not really concerned about the hive, but we were still impressed with how much work they had already done! We decided not to look for the queen based on our previous Thing 1 experience.

Horton / The Fuzz

Although this hive had only been setup for a few days we decided to bust it open... after all, we were checking the other hives out and couldn't resist. Let me tell you, these are what they are talking about when they say "busy bees". After only being in the swarm box for about two days, they had already built up more comb than Thing 1. These bees seemed to be in good shape, even though they were confined to the swarm box.

After all the inspections were complete, we decided to go ahead and combine Thing 1 and Horton for a couple of reasons...

• The Thing 1 queen was MIA
• Thing 1 had built hardly any comb in over a week
• Horton had a lot of bees to be confined to the swarm box

To pull off this stunt we shook all the Horton bees into the Thing 1 hive... presto complete!

...And then there were two!

The burg.. well, Greensburg

We received a call last night for a swarm down in Greensburg. We decided to go pick it up this morning, but first we had some shopping to do. Off to Lowest we went! According to the people with the swarm, it was located ~10 to 12 feet up in a tree, so we picked up a 6 foot A-frame ladder. We also bought a tarp in case some bees ended up on the ground again. Our friend Ben came along for some bee capturing fun!

This was by far the biggest swarm yet. It seems like I keep saying that, but so far it has been true every time! The swarm was located about ~12 feet up on a pine tree limb no where near the base of the tree. Unfortunately, our ladder was not tall enough (guess we need an 8 foot one) so we had to borrow one from the house we were at. The ladder we borrowed was the leaning type so that made the operation a bit more difficult, especially since the swarm was far away from the center of the tree. We decided to spend a lot of time planning this one out due to the obvious difficultly of the removal.

First, we placed the tarp underneath the swarm. Since we were stuck with the leaning ladder, we had to cut the branch near the trunk of the tree. This made the branch a lot longer and heavier then if we were able to cut right near the swarm. This was the first time we needed to use the saw due to the thickness of the limb. I slowly cut the branch, while Shark stabilized the limb. Since the limb was so long and heavy, it was likely going to fall and bring the bees down with it. Shark did a great job guiding the limb to the ground and got all the bees into the box or on the tarp. Once they were on the tarp Shark skillfully slid them into the box. I can tell you that tarp was the best $4 investment we have made yet!

We waited around for about 20 minutes and most of the bees made their way into the box. It was getting pretty crowded in there. I was a little worried about the size of the box, but somehow the bees managed to fit. After a couple of scoops with our handy KFC cup, we capped the box and were on our way! Overall, it was a very successful swarm removal! Plus, Ben warmed up to the bees after a while! He even wore the bee suit!

The fuzz

There was much excitement with this recent swarm removal. This one was the 7th call and the 3rd successful removal. I got to try out our new swarm boxes from Mannlake which worked out pretty good for this one. The box is a little small but it has some nice features. It keeps everything nice a ventilated and has a plug for the bee entrance once I get it home. It even has places I can hang 5 frames to make it a temporary hive. On to the removal!

I get a call from bee control again and he puts me in touch with Sergeant Tom from the Carnegie police department. These bees had landed on a road barrier in the middle of a small neighborhood in front of an apartment complex. This would be the first time the swarm ended up on an object rather than in a tree or bush. The fun thing about this removal was the special police treatment. They blocked off both sides of the road with their cop cars and got their lights blinking. I felt like a super hero! As luck would have it the swarm wasn't that large and they were very easy to work with. The barrier wasn't secured together so I could easily lift it from the legs and lower it to the box. A few shakes and a few brushes with some weeds and we had the majority of the swarm. 15 mins – wham bam thank you mam’m!

This was the furthest I've driven yet and it was during very bad traffic conditions so more than an hour each way. No donations for this one so I had to fit the gas bill, which was a good 15$ or so driving the SUV. From this one I learned that it’s not at all out of the question to ask for a small donation $20-$40 bucks is fine and helps to cover initial hive expenses and most importantly the gas!

As far as a name, we really didn’t think that far ahead. Sticking with the Dr. Seuss theme we thought “Horton” would be fitting. Otherwise “The Fuzz” in honor of the police escort.