Straightforward. Yeah, right.

"WHY would I use the word 'straightforward' in ANY sentence involving beehive removal work??"

I stared at the wall, hoping solutions would appear.  Solutions failed to appear.  I stared some more.  Solutions persisted in their absence.

The job was supposed to be relatively straightforward.  My boss at the Corps had a hive that had shown up at his house, and had taken up occupancy as unwanted guests.  He had asked me to go and take a look.  I looked.  The house had shiplap siding, and the bees were coming and going in an interior corner in the building. 

I looked under the house in the crawlspace, and there was no evidence that the bees had any access to the space under the house.  No sound, no motion, no dead bees at the entrance. 


And no comb to be seen anywhere.

My proposed approach, then, was,

1. Remove shiplap siding, cutting away just enough to expose the comb,
2. Remove the comb, brushing away bees into prepared boxes, 
3. Place any recently laid brood comb in the boxes, 
4. Vacuum any remaining bees, 
5. Clean up, 
6. Claim my check.



It was a hot day, but the work should be pretty easy.  My only concern was how to minimize the damage to the siding.  "This appears to be a pretty straightforward job," were the words that came out of my mouth.

I arrived on Sunday afternoon, all smiles and selfies.



Happy beekeeper.  It would not last.

First step: remove shiplap siding.  Since I had not actually tried to remove any of the siding before I got the contract signed (it is considered bad form, apparently, to start demo before you get approval),  I was worried that the siding was HardiePlank - the concrete siding.  If so, I was in for a rough go of it on the demo.  That stuff is tough to cut.

Turns out, it was the masonite variety - much easier to break/remove/cut.  I breathed a premature sigh of relief.

And got to work.  First obstacle was the presence of a moisture barrier (easily dealt with) and a layer of waferboard (OSB) under the siding.  Not completely unexpected, but it made the job a little tougher.  So instead of just prying the boards loose, I was going to have to cut them out. 

Reciprocating saw to the rescue!

After I had cut deeper than I had thought was necessary, I pried up a section of the OSB, and found wood underneath.  I cut a wider swath through the OSB, and uncovered more wood.  And then more. 

And more.

Finally, I had pried and cut and uncovered as much as I possibly could.  I was staring at a 2x12 pine board - a floor joist that bore the weight of the house on it.

  

That's right.  A load-bearing floor joist.  Not the thing you want to cut.  Bees were just on the other side of it.  And on top of the pine boards was the subflooring - another layer of OSB.  Immediately on top of that was the wall studs.

Rough diagram of the Cutaway of the corner

I now had a full inventory of what was there.  What I did not have, apparently, was a way in.

Can't cut away the brick.  Can't cut away the load-bearing joist.  Can't cut away the subfloor that the wall sits atop.  Cutting the wall does not do any good - it won't get me into the void.

I sat on my bucket, wondering why I had decided that this was a good way to make some extra money.

And here we join again where we started the blog entry. I stared at the wall, hoping solutions would appear.  Solutions failed to appear.  I stared some more. Solutions persisted in their absence.

I went back under the house, intent on doing more than just a spot check.  Sure enough, there was a tiny, two-inch crack between the joist and the brick. Maybe enough to get my hand between the boards.  And in that crack, there be bees - bright, beautiful comb clearly visible.

As I backed out of the crawlspace under the house, my hand rested on something papery.  My flashlight identified it as an 8-foot snakeskin. 

Now, friends, my option is to go under the house, sharing tight quarters with what might be a snake, focusing on the removal of bees from a remote location where I only have a 2" access crack, on a 95-degree, 100% humidity day in August.  Or I could go home and drink cheap beer.

Beer never sounded so good.

With a lot of grunting and maybe some swearwords, I folded myself into the space and started cutting out the comb.  After the second piece of comb, the nectar and honey began to flow downward.  Onto me.  I got coated in dripping honey and nectar for the next hour, and then needed a break.

I shared the wealth with the Bodrons, who looked suspiciously at the pieces of honeycomb with bees still attached.  "How do you eat it?"  A couple of bites of pure, unadulterated honeycomb later, and they both were convinced that fresh honey was something special.

"One thing to know", I explained.  "This is not honey.  It is only honey after it gets to a certain humidity level, and we stopped the bees from getting there.  As it is, it will ferment, so you will need to screen it and keep it in the fridge - it simply won't last very long."

One sip of water later, it was time to go back in.  I cut away more comb, finally beginning to see brood comb.  There was absolutely no way to keep the comb intact, because it all had to be compressed (read: squished) to get it out of the gap between the board and the brick.

Another hour later, and I am dripping honey from every spot on me.  I finish up the cutting out of the comb, and brush the cluster of bees into a bucket, before hauling them out and transferring them into a box that is waiting on them.

Each time I come out of the crawlspace, it gets harder to convince myself to go back in.  But several more trips, and I have cleaned the areas out as well as I can, I have dosed the area liberally with poison to discourage the bees from coming back, and I have sealed up as much as I can with expanding foam sealer.  I have vacuumed up, cleaned up, and treated as much as I can.

I slide myself out from under the house, gather up the stuff I need, and trudge to the truck. 

It ends up taking two more trips out to complete the tasks associated with the removal, and every time I get in my truck I find a new spot that has honey residue still sticking around. 

But the bees have been deposited in their new home, and were last seen happily buzzing around all of the nectar-honey that I had fed back to them.  Hopefully making a new home where they were wanted.

And I headed for that beer.  Straightforwards.

Recent Arrival

"How long has the hive been there?"

Whenever I am answering a request to do a honeybee hive removal for someone, I have a series of questions I ask.  Did you spray them?  How high are they?  Are they aggressive?  Are they getting inside?

I just added the question above to my list, because the answer can change the expectation of what I have awaiting me when I open the wall.

This week was a simple removal.  Bees in the Eaves. An easy cut out of decaying soffit, a quick reach in to cut out the comb, and then it is just a matter to separate the comb with honey (almost a certainty, at this time of year), box up the brood comb with rubber bands to hold it in place, and vacuum up remaining bees.

In this instance, it was even easier than that.

Ty Wamsley had been my office neighbor for a couple of years.  He was the director of the Science and Technology section of Mississippi Valley Division, and so I was delighted when I got his call.  Even more so when he wanted to talk about bees.

After looking over the site, I was convinced that there was very little space for the bees to have expanded to, and so started the cutout carefully.  I tore off the plywood to get at the cavity, and found quite a bit of clean, bright comb. The space appeared very small, consistent with what he had described. After removing the first couple of pieces of empty, new comb, I cut out first one piece of brood comb, and then another.  And then the third.

Video recorded with a potato

But no honeycomb.

In all, I cut off a dozen pieces of comb, total.  Only four of the pieces had been used for brood, and those were still light enough to be pretty.

This was a recent arrival.

Apparently, some time in the past month, some seriously docile bees (hooray for docile!) had swarmed into his house and made their home.  They made a conscious decision to swarm, and then agreed on where the new home was going to be.  Ty's house was the winner.

This is where I get to geek out a little.  Honeybee decisionmaking process is so much cooler than anything we use to make decisions.  One day, I am going to run an experiment where we replicate bee decisionmaking in one of our Corps projects, and see if we get different results.

Bee process starts with population pressure.  Once the bees have filled all of the available space in their current digs with comb, and they have filled that comb space with a combination of honey, pollen, and brood, they get to feeling the population pressure.  When they do, the queen picks a whole bunch of recently emerged bees, and takes off in a swarm. When the queen leave, she is accompanied by about 60% of the bees in the hive. (That is a HUGE hit for a beekeeper, who mostly just wants those girls for their sweet, sweet products)

As soon as they leave, and sometimes a little before, scout bees head out to do recon.  They find a place, and come back to report.  And they report with the famous "waggle dance", first decoded by von Frisch in 1949.  The figure eight dance (swing yer pardner, round ye go....) gives direction and distance, and communicates GPS coordinates to the bees that are 'listening'.  Those bees go and check it out.  If they like it, they come and give the same dance.

If they don't, they find another, and come back and give different coordinates.

The cool thing is this: THEY VOTE.

As more and more scouts return to the group, they dance their vote, and at some point, the group gets enough votes to make the move.  And they decide, en masse, to make the move.  And they swarm.

The queen can only make it a little ways.  She's fat and not used to exercising (like me), and after a little flight she takes a rest.

Eventually, she arrives and they immediately start building clean, white comb for her to lay eggs in.  At around 1500 eggs a day, eventually she fills up the space with lots of bees.  And those bees fill up the space with comb. And honey and pollen.

If you don't have lots of honey and pollen, it means that the bees are either a) struggling from a lack of resources, or b) they are just starting out.  Beginning of spring, no flowers, I'd choose a).

But late spring, I am guessing b).

The numbers of bees in Ty's hive were impressive.  And I expect that by the end of the day, the foraging bees will be coming home.  When they do, I can close up their entrance and transport them to the house. 

But I would have had a different expectation when I opened the wall, if I had just asked the right question.  Ty responded, "You know, I don't know.  I think we first noticed them about a month ago.  But it might have been longer."

A month seems about right.  Enough time to have bumped up the numbers of bees, built enough comb to get busy, and not enough time to actually fill the comb with honey.  (Well, maybe not...)

So, next time, I will ask.

The bees were boxed, and were set aside to allow all the foragers to return.  The next day, they will find themselves in a new home.  One that I hope they will learn to love.


***********************UPDATE*****************************************

It is pretty much guaranteed, that when I read about bees, and then use my knowledge and logic to make a decision, that:
A) The bees have not read the same books, and
B) The bees do not use the same logic.

I set the box aside so that the bees in the box would care for the brood, and that the queen (whom I had hoped was in the box, as well....) would keep everybody in the box.

I grabbed the box the following morning - while it was still dark out - and one bee walked out.  I figured that was a good sign, and hustled them to their new home.

I opened the box later in the day, and that was the ONLY bee that had remained behind.  The rest had followed the queen somewhere else.  Somewhere near Ty's house is a new hive of bees that are struggling to build comb and survive.

It turns out that they heard about the fact that I charged rent for staying on my property.  And they figured it was better to be a squatter in a tree than a tenant in a box.

Ah, well.

The Beverly Carol - a B&B&B

It seems as though working at heights is my go-to job now.  Once again, I had a bee removal effort in Vicksburg, where the elevation of the job just gave me pause.

The entrance to this hive at the Beverly Carol - a historic home in the downtown area of Vicksburg,  was high on the exterior wall - right at the corner of the building.  Below the entrance was a three-and-a-half story drop.

The bees are somewhere near the top.  I can't even look.

It was not the sort of job I was looking forward to.

Immediately, I looked for alternative solutions.  After a little while of trying to figure out my options of ladders and scaffolding, I asked the owner if I could see inside.

The location interior to the hive is a laundry room, and one that is a later addition to the lovely 1910 house, now turned into a B&B.  Well, maybe a B&B&B....

It appears that a second-story balcony was enclosed, siding put on the outside, and tongue-and-groove flooring used as paneling for the walls.  Pretty solid.

But the proximity to the hive meant that it would be a perfect way to get at the hive without facing a three-story drop.  I provided Mrs. Jenkins with my estimate - the lowest amount that I charge for removals - based on the expected effort to remove a small infestation in a small corner of the building from the inside.

Easy peasy.

How hard can it be?

I know better than to ever say those words out loud.  Nothing is EVER easy peasy when it comes to bees.  And speaking the words means that the task is immediately more difficult than you can manage.

So I sealed the room with plastic sheeting - to keep the bees from going out the door and into the house - and got started.

Getting started is often the hardest for me.  I'm not sure what it is - might just be the spankings I got as a kid - but I just don't want to damage anything.

After finally breaking loose the corner molding, I was able to open the hive.  Just the corner.  And some excited bees made their way into the room.  Curious - not angry, but intent on evaluating the threat.


The tongue-in-groove paneling was locked into place in the corner, and resisted easy removal.  So over the next half hour, I struggled to remove the wall to get at the comb.  The area was almost certain to be a small one - there was just not enough space in the corner to hold a hive of any real size.

I finally decided that removing the molding around the window would allow me more access, and I pried it loose. 

Opening the wall.

The hive was not relegated to just the corner.  It turned out that this was an enormous hive, extending for about eight feet to the right of the corner. The comb next to the entrance was mostly dry, having held honey that had already gotten sucked down during the winter.  But an opening down below allowed the bees to expand.  And expand.  And expand.

A sawzall quickly  came into play (by the way, bees HATE the sound of saws), and I cut down the wall at the edge of the exposed comb, and exposed additional an additional five feet.  The area covered by the bees was phenomenal.

There was dry comb on the left.  There was nectar on the margin. And then rows and rows of brood - baby bees just waiting to be born.  Comb extending down four and five feet below where it was connected to the wall.

Baby bees, including several
peanut-shaped queen cells. 
Baby queens, ready to emerge.

This extension created a huge problem for transportation.  If you had asked me 20-questions about the hive before I started, I would have had a hard time guessing whether it was bigger than a breadbox.  That was about the size I expected it to be.

Instead, what resulted was much bigger than what I had the ability to move.  I came with equipment to stage and transport bees in two boxes. Those two filled up before I got done with the first segment.  The rest was choosing what pieces to save and which to discard.  Eggs for boy bees?  Discard pile.  Honeycomb with nectar in it?  Crush and strain, and then feed the remnants back to the bees.  Eggs of girls (worker bees)?   If they are in good shape, save them.

I cut and parsed and discarded and set aside a LOT of comb.  Anything that I did not put back in the hive got melted down to make wax - I should have quite a lot of lip balm available pretty shortly.  Maybe some mustache wax, too....

I did get some video of the removal of the comb.  The hyperlapse function of my camera was a good way to capture it, since it took forever to complete the job.

It took the whole day.

And then the next.

Cleaning the sticky leftovers took quite a while.  But the bees were promptly installed in the home bee yard, and are now happily buzzing around in their new home.

The Beverly Carol dropped a B - they are no longer a B&B&B!

(Or maybe they dropped an E - from the Beeverly Carol).

Duff Green Removal, Part 2 (Or How I learned to avoid the sting and love the bomb.)

So most of the time, when I get a call to remove bees, it is because the bees have begun to migrate inside the house.

Not this time.

This was the second hive removal from Duff Green, and the one that I was most worried about.  With the first removal, I was able to stand, kneel, sit, stoop, and walk around the hive until I was able to pry the eave bracket from the wall.  The closest to danger I got was dropping the four feet from the roof to the balcony.  Significant risk to my pride, but no real consequence, since nobody was watching me do it.

The height of the second hive, combined with the fact that there was no easy access, meant that I needed help.

Help came.

Boom.

With the assistance of the truck, I was able to spend my attention on the bees, rather than whether I was able to keep my balance on an extension ladder. 

The hive was visible on the outside of the building, certainly a result of the hive running out of space inside one of the two eave brackets on either side of it.  The comb was attached to both, so it could have been either one.... and I was hoping for the one closer to the truck.  Otherwise, I would be reaching out around the corner to proceed.

But first things first, I started cutting down the comb.

The comb on the outside of the building was very friable.  The bees had sucked out all of the goodie from the comb, leaving a dry waxy husk.  The second and third layers were the same.  Brightly colored comb, with minimal evidence of use.

Two sections removed.  Photo: Kathe Lawton

Two sections removed.  Photo: Kathe Lawton

Then the bees started appearing.  It was a cold day, so there was minimal activity.  Mostly just a couple of flybys telling me to buzz off.   At this point, Mr. Wright, who had accompanied me in the lift up until this point, decided that the roof was a better place from which to direct and observe.  

Each of the successive sheets of comb had more brood and bees on it, and the girls got a little more defensive with each step.  But at the end of the ten pieces of comb, I cleared off the remaining bees to figure out where the entrance to the larger part of the hive was, and I found...

Nothing.

The bees were not accessing the inside of the structure at all.  Like wasps or hornets, they had built the entire thing on the outside of the building, exposed to the elements.

As a result, they were not as strong as the group that had hunkered down in the eave bracket.  Their numbers were reduced, and there was maybe some evidence of a predator trying to gain access.  Very little honey remained, and they were not doing a great job of foraging.  The weather has been pretty rotten - wet and cold alternating in a bad foraging arrangement - so it is possible that they just couldn't keep up. 

The entire group went pretty docilely into the box, and I followed up with a clean-up of the corner, including a dosage of pyrethrins (hornet spray), to discourage future swarms from taking up residence.  Half hour later, and I had the box carefully stowed, the extra way set aside for melting down, the clean up complete, and the truck driver on his way.

Now to hope that they can weather a couple of cold nights in their new complex.  Fingers crossed.

Come out! (Photo: Kathe Lawton)

Heart-shaped hole in the comb.

I need a fish-eye lens to get the full picture. (Photos: Kathe Lawton)

Postscript:  two of my most common questions:

How do you avoid getting stung? (Um, I haven't figured out how to avoid it, yet.)

How many times do you get stung during something like this? (I really don't know.).

I am not sure how to explain it.  This weekend, I was working with Stephen Coy down in Wiggins, MS, with his operations down there.  While I was working, I started getting stung.  A few bees made it up my pants leg, and started to let me know they were there, in a final gesture sort of way.

The first one, I noted, and kept working.  The second one, I noted, and kept working.  The third one, I figured I had a problem, and moved to the side to deal with it.

But getting stung is just part of the process - not something you go after, just something that happens.  And at some point, you notice, but are too focused on the task to pay attention to the mounting count of stings.  

So I don't know.  I can usually get a count by the welts. But especially if the bees sting through the shirt, only a little venom gets in, and I might not react. 

The bees react, though.  More stings means more fight pheromones in the air.  Means more stings. 

So not getting stung seems one of the best ways to avoid getting stung.  Now if I can just manage that....

Taking, Pried In my Work, with a Stinging Postscript

Back at it.

(If you just want to read about me getting stung repeatedly, skip to that part of the story at the bottom of the entry, under follow-up:)

I was determined today to remove the eave bracket and get at the honeybees inside.  Suited up, grabbed the crowbar, and started crowbarring.

The first part of the removal I attacked was the molding over the top.  It came out pretty easily, even with the 150-year-old cut nails holding it in place.  This action did not expose any bees to the elements, though.  Above the eave bracket was just a wood block, and above the block, open space.  And a lot of cobwebbing.

Next I worked on prying the bracket loose from the wall.  The more I pried, though, the more that it seemed that everything was giving way, while the eave bracket was holding firm.

One other thing occurred to me as I was tugging at it.  As I twisted and pried, the force of my effort was vectored away from me. Simple physics (PhuFy!). Problem is, there is nothing that could prevent it from breaking loose and falling over the edge, making it into a heavy metal block filled with lots of unhappy bees, unprepared to meet the ground with intense deceleration trauma.  In the process, the eave bracket, a lovely piece of 150-year-old cast iron, would meet an unhappy demise, as well.

Long journey home.

I had already requested that the people parked directly beneath the edge please move their cars.  But I really did not want to lose either bees or bracket.

So I tied off some string to the bracket, and tied it to another bracket, 15 feet away.  That seemed crazy flimsy, so I looked around for something else.  Finally went down to the truck (my fifth trip down 4 flights of stairs) and got a tie-down strap, and tied it off to the same adjacent bracket.

Tightened it down.

By this time, the bees are getting a little curious.  It is a cool day - temperatures in the high 40s - and they are reluctant to venture too far from the warm hive.

But as I started to pry... they got more excited.

I alternated prying and ratcheting, until I started to see it give.  Just a little to start off with, and then increasingly as I pried more.  Finally, it gave way, and dropped.  75 pounds of bees and cast iron and sand (Wait... sand??) and comb all fell and landed at my feet.  Removal with a bang.

It did not go over the edge.  Win.

The bees, however, did not consider this a win.  In fact, they considered it a very upsetting loss, and began to let me know about it in no uncertain terms.

I took the comb out, piece by piece, salvaging whatever I could so I could place it in the box that I had prepared for it.  By this point the bees had calmed down, as it was pretty chilly. Their focus was on getting as much of the honey out as they can, and balling up around the queen.

Who was elusive as she could be. Queen of hide-and-seek.

The sand inside was a bit of a mystery at first.  But when I looked at the inside of the eave bracket, there was a series of clay molded pieces inside - the work of dirt daubers.  Apparently, when the bees took over, they ousted the dirt daubers, and just built on top of the old mud... some of which dissolved and collected inside as a sand bath.

After cutting all the comb out, I took the eave bracket and placed it on top of the empty box, that had new comb interspersed in it.  With both cold and wet weather coming, I am skeptical of whether it will be good for the girls.  But I hold out some hope.

There was a little bit of honey remaining, and the girls had just started to put together some new stores after a long winter.  Since I removed those pieces, I will need to feed them to keep them going until they can do it on their own.

There is another hive at Duff Green Mansion.  In a couple of weeks, I will be able to get it, using a lift.  But from this hive, I was able to find out the piece of information that I needed to make that next one go smoothly.

There is a metal brace underneath the eave bracket that supports it.  This was the piece of information that I needed.  The bracket beneath holds the bracket in place, and once it is removed, the bracket comes loose.

My frustration in last week's attempt at this was that I had removed the bolts, but had not seen the brace.  So prying did me no good.  This time, brute force and ignorance won, but it also gave me the information I needed.  By removing the bolts, and removing the screws that hold the brace in place, I can easily remove it.

Maybe not easily hold it.  But definitely remove it.

Follow-up:

The night after removing the eave bracket and encouraging the bees to enter the box, we got rain.  Cold rain.  It was bad, and I was pretty sure that any bees that survived were going to be in bad shape.

So I decided to rob my healthy hive of one frame of nectar very quickly, so as not to disturb them too much.  Quick in, quick out, nobody will be too upset.

Wrong.  Very wrong.

Usually, when I am doing things with minimal impact, I'll put on a veil and maybe a long sleeve shirt. And sometimes I'll work without smoke.  This time, I took time to suit up and got my smoke going first.  Every precaution.

Those girls boiled out of the hive and started working on my suit, sacrificing themselves by injecting venom into the cloth with reckless abandon.

Eventually, one or two of them found a crease, and injected a little venom into a leg.  And an arm.  Then a shoulder.  Still they came boiling out.  Smoke did not deter them.

Then I felt a sting on my neck. I glanced down to see if I had managed to leave a gap in the zipper-velcro seal at my throat.  Nope.  But there she was, inside with me.  Still trying with every bit of energy she had to hurt, rip, damage the intruder to HER hive.

Then another appeared.  Walking across my throat, with similar intent.

Bees by the hundreds, covering mask.  Covering my jacket.  Covering every surface.  I cut my work very short, and left with the first piece of hardware I could pry free, closed up the box as quickly as I could, and fled.

They followed, grabbing on and stinging with evil glee.  More arm stings, leg stings, and five more bees in my bonnet.  (That expression was never more apt.) I dropped the frame with a slight amount of nectar into the back of the truck, and went back to rescue my smoker and tools.  When I did, the girls came back after me with renewed vengeance.

I had heard of hot hives, but this was the hottest I had ever experienced.  They were MAD.  Clearly, these girls had spent WAY too much time playing first person shooter games.  They didn't even care that it was just one bullet that they carried.

I shook off as many as I could, and got into my truck, still suited up, with bees all over me.  I cracked the window (weird fun fact: bees will leave if the window is cracked, but not if it is wide open), and a few bees made it out.

And then, one block down the road, the bees inside my suit all decided to get me at once.

I pulled over, jumped out, and stripped my suit, shaking off as many bees as I could.  Still they came after me.  One on my scalp.  Another at my throat.  And my eyebrow.  Now that my arms were bare, they were looking lasciviously at long expanses of exposed flesh.  Looking to do violence.  It was then that I noticed a hole in the mesh in front of my face.

Note to self: check mesh BEFORE getting into an altercation with defensive bees.  Not during, nor after.

I got back in the truck.

The whole trip back to Duff Green, bees flew at me while I was driving. I checked twice before going through the house, because I really didn't need additional angry bees introduced into the Bed and Breakfast.  Not good for business (either theirs or mine).

When I got up to the top, it looked like the bees had not made it.  I turned the eave bracket over, and there were no bees in the box.  Over at the wall, there were a pile of dead bees still attached to one another where the bracket had come down.

And so I turned the bracket over, and out tumbled a slightly damp mass of sad, unhappy bees.  But they were alive.  And the first girl to show up, right on the top, was Mary Lake, queen bee of Duff Mansion herself.  I grabbed a queen clip, trapped her quickly,  and dumped her in the box.

A few minutes later, I had swept as many live bees into the box as I could, and placed the stolen - and dearly paid for - frame of nectar into the box, and closed the lid.

Cleanup will come another day.

On the way home, more bees warmed up.  And they, too, stung me.

So I am writing up my results with one eye half swollen shut, and a silly grin on my face.  Those girls are going to do OK.  Lady Xoc is laying like crazy, and making some crazy bees to defend her turf.

First Job - FAIL (for the moment)

Last Monday I set aside the time to remove the bees from Duff Green.  Quick in, quick out, two hives of bees to relocate.

The result was awful. An unmitigated failure.

The space is not enough to get the hydraulic lift in, said Harley.  But, she said, we have some really long ladders - 60' or so.

OK.

About forty five minutes later, the 42' ladders showed up, and  we maneuvered them into place.  Even fully extended, we were going to be short.  I climbed the ladder, and about halfway up, felt that l'appel du vide - that horrible feeling that you are being drawn to the edge of something at a great height and feel that you are going to fling yourself off the edge.

On a ladder, for crying out loud.

Once I got to the top of the extended part of the ladder, it was obvious.  There was just no way.  We looked at it from about five different angles, and even a couple of angels. From the extension ladder, I would have to stand on top of the last rung.

Um.... nope.

The solution, without the lift, is to have to anchor a 12' step ladder to the wall on top of the narrow balcony.  Sturdy enough, but if I felt the fear of falling from the extension ladder, it was about to get a LOT worse if I tried it from the balcony.

So what do I do?

My next door neighbor is Jared.  He is my insurance agent (Kathe, sensibly, trusts his assessment of risk more than she trusts mine) and his willingness to try anything has made him an invaluable companion on the trips to evaluate bees. Even if he is decidedly NOT excited about bees.

We scoped out the second location - on the left side of the picture above (MORE BEES!)  It was decidedly more accessible.  From the roof, we dropped down onto the metal roof over the balcony.  From this vantage point, we got a better look at what was going on.

The cornice is right at the edge of the same drop.
Don't look down

As Kathe and I had figured earlier, the bees moved into the cornice/eave bracket/sconce.  But what I had seen the previous time....well, the removal of the faceplace of the cornice was going to be an easy job.

Heh.

The cornice is made of cast iron.  The faceplate is not hinged.  And it might be a single cast piece.  Glued, anchored in place, and immutable as bedrock.  Not budging.

Jared and I tried a number of ways.  We removed the two bolts.  We pried.  We hammered a putty knife into the joint. We pried at the wood molding above, and looked for an hour for any way to get in.  Nothing.

OK, time to change tack.

We smoked the bees and then tried to vacuum them through the hole.  They were having none of that.  That was my mistake - the smoke made them retreat deeper into the cornice, and we netted a total of one sad bee.

So even if I had gotten the lift, all I would have been able to do is to remove the external bees.  The bees inside would have stayed inside.

After we finally gave up for the day (and the week - it was raining a LOT this week), I started trying to research the architectural features.  There are multiple cornices on the house without bees in them, so I could test out any removal technique on one that was not hanging over the edge.  The consensus - from builders to architectural historians to economists (I don't know why the economist should have an opinion, but I really couldn't stop him from giving one) - is that there is just a lot of paint and glue - and the bolts - holding it in place.

I'm going to try again.  But as the weather gets warmer, the bees will be more active.  And more prone to defend their space against intruders like me.

If anyone has ideas, I am open.

Wish me luck.

First Job of the Season

I feel a little rusty.  For a while last summer, I was doing honeybee hive removals pretty regularly, and I had my toolkit together, and knew what I needed to do, and in what order.  Each one presented new challenges, but I had the pieces covered.

Now it has been months, and I have a little bit of doubt.

Photo: LeeAnn Riggs

The project is interesting.  A antebellum mansion here in Vicksburg has honeybees in a corner of the building.  Maybe two corners.  I went to take a look, and was more than just a little shocked.  The bees had built their comb on the outside of the building.

Not normal beehavior.

Standing on the ground, 45 feet below, it was hard to fathom what was going on.  The bees had clearly outgrown the space that they had inside, and had continued to build on the outside.  But how....what... why?

And how was I going to get up there?

A narrow balcony hangs off the side of the mansion, directly underneath. I climbed out the window and onto the balcony, trying to get a better idea of how to access the colony.

An extension ladder would be precariously tippy, if the base is not far enough from the roofline. And it hard to get a ladder that can reach 45' in the air that fits in the back yard of the home.  Next stop was the balcony.  From the balcony, you can reach... maybe.  But my 10' step ladder would be a little wide to fit on the narrow balcony.  Maybe doable, maybe not.

Roof access is dicey.  The overhang gives a view of the bees, but I was literally hanging over the edge to take this picture.

To-the-side view.  Don't look down.

There is certainly no way to reach under from above, and completely clear out the comb. Worse still, you can't see well enough to know whether the bees are coming out of a different location, or whether you've gotten them all.

A second visit to the hive, later in the day, helped confirm some things that I had suspected, and got clarity on others.

The original hive, as best I can tell, had formed inside the architectural feature at the corner of the roof line (cornice?  eave bracket?) and the bees had quickly run out of room inside.  So at some point last year, they expanded outwards.  Way outwards.

Right now, the bees have removed most of the honey as they have overwintered, so the comb is empty and dry.  Their numbers are starting to recover, as the queen starts her spring laying.  The worker bees are getting pollen from somewhere... which means protein for the babies.  All of which is basically indicating that they are about to have a population explosion.

So it is time to get them into some new, rent-free digs.

Harley Caldwell, who owns the bee-and-bee, listened as I made my offer.  There are almost certainly two hives - one on either side of the building.  Same spot, opposite corners, almost equally inaccessible. I put it to her that there were essentially two options for removal: a) I could anchor a ladder to the balcony and the chimney, and scale the heights, or b) she could rent a lift.  My price went WAY down if she rented the lift.  But not enough to make the overall project cheaper for her.

Excuse me, General.  May I bum a lift?

Even though it would be more expensive for her to do it that way, she agreed that renting a lift was the way to go.
She is looking into the details of renting the lift for me.  Meanwhile, I am counting my boxes and frames.  Going through checklists to make sure that my tools are ready, and clean, and in good repair.  That my suit only has holes where it is supposed to.  And that I am ready, and that I have figured out what I need to do to prepare another home for another hive.

Maybe two.

Late-Season Removal

The bees were pretty aggressive.  That was a change.

The lift.  Bees were located between
the two windows on the right

Several months ago, Mrs. Joyce Clingan called me and asked me to remove the bees that were in the corner of her home.  We had planned to schedule the removal to coincide with the fixing of her gutters.  She already needed to rent the lift, so why not combine the tasks, and just rent the lift once?

Made sense.

Of course, the gutter repairs had been delayed, and life had intervened.  Now it was several months later, and had gotten to a time when translocating bees can be difficult, but.... it was also time for the bees to go.  So she simply went ahead and rented the lift. Friday morning, I gathered my materials, and went over to see if I could figure out how to use the machine that would make my life easier.

After spending a little while getting used to the controls, I got to work.  Having the lift beats the heck out of climbing a ladder and balancing everything at every step.  I started off with the prybar, and pulled loose the fascia board, to expose the first section of bees.

Bee stinger - removed from the author's nose....

Predictably, the bees were sincerely unhappy about this development, and reminded me repeatedly why it was a good idea to wear a suit and veil. They also expressed their displeasure with the innocent painter who was walking nearby, and sought me out to confer every time I took a break to get some water (one decided my nose looked like a potential new hive, and climbed in to investigate, and stung me when I objected.  Another worked her way under my baseball cap.  And stung me when I objected.  Yet another found the gap between my jacket and my pants, and my derriere experienced a sharp retort when I sat down.)

Peekaboo!

Choose your own adventure - Honeybees

If you choose to run out the front door, turn to page 23.
If you go to the kitchen to investigate, turn to page 26.

Was there ever anything better than those books?  I loved them.  In the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, you chose a path, and got to find out what the consequence of your choice was.  It was almost a delicious precursor to the choices in role-playing games, and their early computer counterparts.

I found out this week that I have been playing my own version of the Choose Your Own Adventure story, as I try to remove bees from the Vicksburg Auditorium.  It has been a steep learning curve, with numerous stops and starts, outright fails, and exhilarating successes (today was a good day, just so you know.)

And so I have decided to chronicle the events like a CYOA book.  Each decision point for the Vicksburg Auditorium will be a separate brief blog entry, that shows how it turned out.  In the process, you will see what I have learned in the process. And if you manage to install the bees in a new home, then you have won.

And if not, a back button will give you another chance.

Let's get started:

You get a call from the City of Vicksburg, and they have bees in their auditorium, and want your help.  Do you:

Pick up the phone and call them back?

or

Decide you'd rather go to the movies?