Queen Maggie, May I Introduce My Mother, Patty

The family legend is that my mom's aunt used to sit outside between the hives that her dad kept.  While he was working, she would bring a book and read, thousands of bees flying around her head.  She was completely at ease around the bees, and would often be found leaning up against the hives.

Her dad fondly called her his Beezie.

I never met anyone who knew her by any other name.

Historically, I don't know of any other beekeepers in my family.  I have a beloved aunt who keeps bees, and another beloved aunt who has bees kept on her farm.  One of my favorite cousins has been wanting to keep bees for almost as long as I have.  But we don't have a long tradition in the family of beekeeping.

I truly wish we did.  There is nothing quite like being able to talk bees with a family member - to discuss the problems and solutions with someone who has worked through the problems themselves.

Yesterday, I started that process.

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? 

Trap Out!

It was time.

I have been putting off the job at the Vicksburg Auditorium for a while.  Partly because of the nature of the job.  Partly because the removal from the other side of the building (yeah, they had TWO hives) had not gone as I wanted it to (the bees moved inside the building, and made a mess, in a lot of ways).  And partly because of the height of the work, combined with a shaky ladder and NO place to grab hold.  

The job, as before, requires me to remove the bees.  From the inside of the auditorium, there is no way to get to the bees - no opening and no access to the interior of the wall.  From the outside, there was also no way to get to the bees - it is solid brick with a small hole.  But the bees need to be gone.  The city has planned a renovation job on the building next month that will put people in contact with the bees, and it is necessary to get the bees out before they begin.  

And so while I did other jobs in the area, I pondered the proper way to approach this job was.  I read.  I asked.  I talked it through.  And finally it was time.  I could not wait any longer to get started.

The idea behind a trap-out is to get the bees out of a wall that you cannot access any other way.  Part 1 of the trap-out is to create a one-way door so that the bees can leave, but not return.  The bees leave the hive to forage, and then can't get back in, and start looking for somewhere to be.  They end up congregating in the closest available space. 

That is where Part 2 comes in.  In Part 2, the beekeeper places a box nearby that the escaped bees can use as a new home.  Make it attractive, make it nice, and you can eventually evict all the bees from their current home, and they will be in the new mobile apartment that you can then move to a safe location (like my backyard).

There are some problems.  Problem #1:  The queen does not like to come out.  This is a big problem, because the queen lays a LOT of eggs every day.  She lays up to 2,000 eggs every day, which means that within the next few weeks, there are up to 42,000 bees in process.  As many as you draw out of the hive, she is going to replace them just as fast.  So the process can take a while.

Eventually, the nurse bees run through all of their honey stores, and they, as their predecessors did, leave to forage.  The queen only remains inside, unwilling to leave.

Problem #2: without the queen, the workers will bring honey and pollen into their new 'apartment', but they won't lay eggs.  You need a queen for that.  So the only way to proceed is to give the inhabitants of the new apartment what they need.  

To take care of problem #2, I opened a hive at the house and pulled out two frames.  One of the frames had eggs, larvae and capped brood, as well as a queen cell (the bees had prepared a queen, just in case).  The other frame had honey.  I put both frames in a 'nuc box' with three empty frames to give the new inmates neighbors a 'partially furnished apartment' - a little bit of a head start on increasing numbers.  And the right smell.

Now all I had to do was to install the art project.

Step 1.  Anchor the box.  Kathe and I had discussed it together, and ended up deciding that the best approach to anchoring a box to a flat brick wall was to throw an escape ladder over the top of the wall, and attach it to that.  So I put the 75-foot aluminum stepladder against the wall, and started the climb, with each aluminum step compressing below me precariously.  At the top, I grabbed on to the top of the wall and held on for dear life, while I tried to 'maneuver' the escape ladder into place without sending the 'man-over'.

Following the successful installation of the ladder, I climbed back down to get the next piece of the puzzle - the straps.  Because I am planning to leave these in place for a couple of months, I used tie-down straps to anchor the box to the ladder. I climbed back up, and attached them - with only one precarious wobble in the process.  That wobble did it - at that exact moment, I made a decision, and stated it out loud for nobody to hear.

"If anything starts to slip, I am letting it fall.  It is all replaceable.  NO heroic saves."  

Step 2.  Next, I needed to place the box in the strap loops. The box, while not heavy, was a little awkward and not well centered, and climbing the ladder with it was a challenge.  But with slow, steady motions, I got in place, grabbed the top rung of the ladder with an elbowlock deathgrip and tried to slide the straps over the box.  I got them in place, but they were loose, and I started to cinch them up.  

First one side.

Then the other. 

Then back again.

One of the straps overlapped, and I was about to get caught in a bind, so I switched hands and....

26 feet, end over end tumble.

No heroic saves.

Before I descended the ladder (no point in rushing) I adjusted the straps.  My wife suggested that she could go and get me some duct tape (why don't I have duct tape?) and drove off as soon as I was safely on the ground.  I picked up the pieces of the box and frames and put them back together.

Honey everywhere.  I can't tell how badly the brood are damaged, but I suspect none of them will remain viable.  And the box itself is a mess.

But duct tape fixes everything, so humpty dumpty got patched and taken back to the top of the ladder, where he was reattached to the escape ladder.  As I started to descend, I realized that the hole was facing the wrong way - away from the opening.

Ah, well.  The bees will find the opening or they won't.

I then moved to the final step.  Setting the trap.  

The idea for the trap is that the bees will come out of a cone over the entrance, but will not find their way back in.  And if there are two cones, one over top of the other, it will be twice as unlikely that they will find their way back in.  So I sealed up the entire hole, with one opening left open, with expanding foam sealer. Once complete, I set the smaller of the cones, made of screen wire, over the entrance and held it in place for the sealer to set. 

Then repeated for the outer cone, made of 18" hardware cloth.

The process took forever, during which time I was on the top of the ladder, surrounded by (surprisingly passive) bees, clad in multiple layers of a bee suit on a hot July day at noon.

When I released the cone, and it stayed in place, I hopped down the ladder and stepped back to observe.  The bees were emerging, and congregating around the entrance.  But it is too soon to see if they are able to get back in.  I will have to check back pretty regularly to see what is happening.

**Update 8 July - I have been monitoring the bees for the past few days, and there does not seem to be any activity on the new apartment.  And more importantly, perhaps, there does not seem to be a large cluster of bees on the exterior of the cone.  I suspect that they have figured a way around the cone, and I will need to re-seal.

When I do (scheduled for Thursday), I will see if I can't take more pics.  And I will replace the box.

My "Not Bees" Contract

"I have a large cone of bees on the window of my house, and I need someone to remove them. Can you come?"

I don't know how Ms. Eloise found me.  It doesn't matter.  I love getting out and finding out where bees have showed up and invaded people's personal space.  She sounded concerned. A little scared.  I told her I could come by after work and look at the situation and see what I could do.  She gave me the address, and thanked me.

As I mentioned before, I don't usually see bees on my own.  I have to have them pointed out to me. Yet again, this was the case.  "Do you see them?" I was looking at a corner where some wasps were buzzing around.  Ms. Eloise redirected my attention to the top of her picture window.

Oh.

That was not what I was looking for.

It was not a huge hornets' nest, but it was unquestionably a hornets' nest.  Not a honeybee hive.  This simple fact took the entire operation well out of my area of expertise.  I don't bring any specialized knowledge of hornets to the table, and I really can't help any more than I would be able to do at home.

"Ma'am, I deal with honeybees.  And my price point starts at $300.  But this situation doesn't fit with what I know.  I mean, I can use hornet spray, but I wouldn't be able to do anything you couldn't do.  If you want me to do it, I can come by after work tomorrow and do it for $50, but...."

"Please do it."

We continued to talk, and I suggested the local pest control guy, who is a friend of mine.  Suggested that she could get him to remove the nest, and treat her house, for essentially what she was offering to pay me.  "I want you to do it.  I am allergic, and I just want them gone."

OK.

I have a can of hornet spray at the house.  I use it after removing hives from houses, because after removing a hive, I need to discourage returning bees from re-occupying.  I bring the can to work with me, and after work, I drive over and suit up.

The hornets are not terribly active, but there was a guard hornet at the entrance.  While I was gearing up, I tested the spray out on a few other red wasp nests that dotted the eaves of the house.  When I felt that my aim was pretty good, I sprayed the nest.

I was ready to run.

The first hornet hit the ground under the windowsill.  I sprayed some more.  Nothing further.

As anti-climaxes go, this one was really racking up some anti-climax points.

Because the nest was just beyond the reach of my knife, I walked around the house to find a board, stick, or something to tie the cutter on.  By the time I returned with a pole, there were more dead hornets on the ground and on the sill.  Not huge numbers.  Mean looking, but few in number.  And dead.

I cut the nest free of the house, and dosed the space with more of the poison.  No stings, no chase scenes, nothing but a few dead hornets.  My A-CP rating for this job was off the charts.

Ms. Eloise had already paid me (and she left quickly, headed back to work), and so all I had to do was clean up a little, shed the suit (98 degrees and high humidity - I had sweat through my work clothes by the time I was done), and leave.  I left the mostly-unused can of hornet spray on her doorstep.  And took a few more pictures as I was leaving.

My specialty is honeybee removal.  The point of the removal is to save as many bees as you can, and provide the hive a new place. Extermination is something different.

But the truth is, some of the same principles are involved, in a way.  In either case, the natural world comes too close to the man-made environment, and we look to beat it back.  Particularly those elements of the natural world that come with pointy bits (honeybees, scorpions, snakes, hornets, spiders, wolverines), we want them at a distance.

As I stated before, I don't know anything about hornets.  I am not aware of a world-wide hornet shortage, or who, exactly, that would inconvenience.  I don't know all of the good qualities of hornets, and I am less fascinated by their social structure than my bees or even ants.  So when I get asked to help out by removing some, I don't mind, but I am not doing anything with any understanding or specialized knowledge.  But sometimes....

Sometimes you just have to help out a neighbor.

And yeah, maybe make 50 bucks in the process....

Make no Mistake

This was a terrible idea.

After a day, you revisit the site, and vacuum the huge number of bees collecting outside, trying to find their way into the hive using the old entrance.  And for whatever reason, the vacuum is more successful than previous days, and you actually get draw through the bucket.  Thousands upon thousands of bees get pulled in.  High mortality rate, but they are getting removed.  And you can install them into another hive, where they can help out another queen.

About the time you are ready to call it a night, Mr Artiss comes and grabs you to talk about the bees inside.

Turns out, you should have read a little more before sealing the hive, because youwould have read this, as quoted from a blog by Mike Thomson:

NOTE: Whatever you do, DO NOT simply seal up the opening where you see bees entering & exiting. They will simply find another way out of the wall/floor where they reside. This often means that they will find a way into the interior of you home, harassing you and your family.

 (Wait.  Did you just say INTERIOR?!?)

Oops.

Yep.  The bees were congregated inside the window.  Piled inside.  Dead bees by the thousands, and live bees by the tens of thousands.  It was the stuff of nightmares.  With a Blues concert coming up in a matter of days, it was not just a minor issue.  It was something that required immediate, and persistent attention.

You show up the next day, beevac in tow, and climbed up the ladder to remove the bees.  There were BILLIONS of bees, and they all went into the beevac and made a sticky bee sludge (since then, you adjusted the suction, and are killing fewer bees).  After removing all the bees outside, you go inside where the bees were congregating at the window, and remove the thousands of bees there.  The window does not close all the way, and so you mistakenly assume that the bees were getting in through the crevice between the window and the sill.  Lots of bees.

Vacuum still sucking up and killing bees, you worked the room until there were only a few bees remaining.  You use your caulk to fill the space between the window and the sill, and then repeat the process, then repeat the process again, as the caulk settled and the hole opened back up.

And for each day for the next two weeks, you repeat the process.  Turns out that the bees had found a way into the attic, and were going towards the light at the window, congregating at what appeared to be an exit.

Once you have that area sealed up, the bees start finding their way into the auditorium.

By the way, it is now high school graduation season.  And the auditorium has daily events.

You chase your tail trying to eliminate the bees from the place where people are, but there are several stings.  Inside. And nothing you can do about it.

Eventually, the bees inside the walls die, and you are in the clear.  No complaints to the mayor's office.  No lawsuits.  And no allergic reactions.  Just a couple of people who are unhappy about getting stung.



Fortunately, or unfortunately, there is still another hive on the other side of the building.  I suggest you try trapping them out.

Cone Trap - Brushy Mountain Part 2

Regardless of how you got here, whether you simply waited or you used some interim measure to try it first, the time finally comes to apply the cone you bought from Brushy Mountain Bee Farms.  And it works.

The bees are able to get out, but not get back in.  The escaped bees look for a new home, and find one in your hive, hung next to the entrance on the escape ladder, carefully draped and secured over the top of the wall, 35' above the concrete.

For some of you who got here after doing other things, you removed the multiple attempts at sealing off the holes and attached the cone.  For those who came straight here, you sealed up the other entrances with expanding foam sealer and attached the cone.

Either way, the cone directs the bees out of the hive, and does not let them back in.

The result is very exciting.

Bees out and about.... and not going back in.  A couple of adjustments a couple of days later, and the box is close enough to draw the bees into the space that smells like bees.  Once the bees have started to see it as a home, you take a couple of frames of brood stolen from one of your backyard hives, and place them in the box.  And then you wait.

For two weeks you wait, leaving the whole setup alone. Of course, you check it out every other day, just to make sure that the seals hold.

Two weeks later, you take the box down, and open it up.

Inside, you see this:

In the two weeks since you put two frames of eggs and brood in the box, the bees inside have taken three of those eggs and made them into queen cells, fed the larvae, closed her up to let her pupate, and then waited.  And she emerged!

You look carefully through the five frames to see if you can could find her (virgin queens are harder to spot) or if she was laying yet. No eggs.  Someone who might be a queen....  but not sure.

Either way, she is there.

And...

She has already started taking care of business.

One hive, One queen.  Inviolate rule.  So, since the bees in the box raised THREE queens, her first job is to eliminate rivals.  She emerged first, and then quickly ran over to the other two, chewed an opening into their pupa cells, and stung them to death.

Ruthless. But effective.

The workers then pulled the carcasses of the dead queen bees out and discarded them, leaving behind a ragged shell of what originally housed royalty.

You are pretty sure that you arrived on day 17 of the queen's life, after she emerged, and before her mating flight.  There were no eggs or brood in the hive.  But you now have a hive with a viable queen.

Partial success to your mission of removing the bees!

Meanwhile, more bees continue to emerge from the auditorium, and they seem to find their way into the box.  At this point, however, you are trying to figure out whether to try another box to capture the remainder of the bees.  After all, the bees emerging from the hive in the wall are not welcome in the new queendom...

Huge success here.  You should be proud of yourself.  And please, help yourself to a little celebration for your success: a cocktail that truly fits the bill: the bees knees.

Taking the Job

"Mr. Lawton?"

"No, ma'am.  That was my dad.  I am just Crorey."

"Oh."

Not an unusual start to a conversation - it usually starts this way.  After introductions, get down to the business of signing contracts, and walk out with a contract for $200 per hive removal.  Discounted because the city is letting you use their ladder.  The height is a little intimidating, but is OK, because you just signed with the city to do work.

One side of the building has a hive - and the hive is next to a tree.  The other side of the building has another hive, and there is nothing there to hang on to - but also nothing to get in your way.  Both of them need to be removed, and need to be removed safely.  For neither of them can you actually tear open the wall.

Your first decision is which side of the building to address first.  Since you are new at this, you pick the one where there is something to grab onto.  It means that there is a little bit of wiggling that you have to do to get to the top, but once you are there, there are sturdy branches to brace yourself against.

The second decision is more important.  How do you coax the bees out?

Your equipment is limited.  You have a vacuum that has been modified to pull bees out, and a bucket that the bees get drawn into (a better design by Dr. Scott Johnson is detailed here).  And you have the traditional smoker and suit.  And finally, you have sealer - a can of expanding foam that will allow you to seal the other entrances, and ensure that you catch the whole hive.  The final ingredient that you have is:

...a fair amount of chutspah.

....and urgency.  There are a number of events planned for the auditorium, and the city wants the participants of each to have a bee-free event.

Two ways to proceed:  Do you:

a) Set up the ladder and the vacuum and get started?  Click here.

or

b) Go back to the house and read more about trapping out bees.  Click here.