Bees Behind Plaster

This one should be easy enough. I have easily accessible bees from the outside – they are entering through broken mortar pieces in the external walls. I have access on the inside. The infrared images are clear that it is a large hive with a single column between two studs. Simple process to open the wall from the inside, cut away the comb, and re-locate the bees.

Heh.

The faux-stone paneling deceives. Instead of an easy removal, I ended up with a morning spent wearing myself out with a reciprocating saw, trying to cut through paneling, over plaster, over lath, tied to oversized studs.

The house is about a hundred years old, and they knew how to do plaster back in the early 1900s. I should have known, after doing some plaster removal in my home in New Orleans, but painful experiences fade.

I would probably have had an easier time if it was really stone.

The house, now in pretty rough shape, is going to be gorgeous once Mary Jane’s crew (Curb Appeals Real Estate) gets done with it. But in the meantime…

Blade after blade broke, bent, and wore down to a nub as I fought to cut through the plaster to get at the bees underneath. Previous experiences have taught me to leave the actual break-through to bee space until the last possible moment. Once the plaster is cut, the Sawzall can be left behind, and the bees settle down a little bit because they are not responding to the sound of a thousand bees.

It also lets me work for a while without the veil.

The morning was cool and rainy, so the bees were not venturing out too far – most of the bees were hunkered down in the hive. And then when the wall was opened…

The bees really were excited to be in the room with me.

The comb was aligned vertically, anchored to the brick on the outside, with delicious honeycomb at the top of the comb, brood comb in the center, and unused comb (the lighter color) at the bottom. The full comb – bottom to top – was really long!

This year has been a crazy one for swarms, with a incredibly high number of swarms across the region (one beekeeper has captured 42 swarms in the past two months). There is something going on – probably related to the freezing temperatures we had for a full week back in March. Bees appear to be working overtime to spread their genes across the region. And this hive showed evidence of more swarms to come.

A few queen cells showed evidence of being torn open. The brood pattern was relatively spotty, and the numbers of worker bees were also relatively low. All three conditions indicate that the previous queen had recently left the hive with a swarm, and a new queen had begun to lay.

There were a large number of queen cups – unused queen cells – in the hive. They were planning and preparing to do it again.

I never saw the queen. But bees have remained in place in their new location, indicating a high probability that she was transferred into the box. The quantities of banded brood seem to have anchored them into their new digs (see time lapse below) and they seem content to work the clover at the house.