“I don’t usually do beehive removals in the winter.”
Removal work is seasonal, I went on to explain to Chris – the guy on the other end of the line. But it isn’t just because the bees are active or not active – it is more a matter of their survivability once they have been removed from their winter fortress. But with this one, there was no choice.
“They are kind of aggressive under there – they don’t like the lawn mower or the tractor or weedeater around their space, but I was pretty much okay with leaving them alone. But do you remember that cold snap from a few weeks ago? Burst the pipes in my cabin, and now I don’t have water any more. I’d go ahead and fix it but they are not happy about sharing their space with me while I do it.”
I ended up taking off work for a warm Thursday in mid-January to take on the task. We drove out to the camp, me following him as he passed (“I’ll be driving a silver extended cab Tundra” – a statement which only eliminated about forty percent of the traffic that passed me by). When we got out to the entrance, I parked next to him, with the intention of loading up his truck with equipment from my (non-4WD) truck, since some of the road gets pretty slick.
And on impulse, he took me down first to see the stream.
“We can wait. Or we can go. The side rails are about 14 inches above the bridge.” I chose to trust, but it was a few minutes before the clench released.
We got to the a camp and the 7-1/2 foot lift to the base floor elevation was revealed. And so were the bees.
The bees had moved in to four places in the building, shoving the insulation out of the way for the spot where they had carved out for their own space. Two, unfortunately, had located immediately adjacent to the pipes that burst. So when the cold water started melting and inundation began, these girls were the first victims. In with the dead, empty comb, I even discovered a queen cell, filled and ready to be capped (which, I believe, means that they had moved on before fall – they would not likely have raised a queen during winter).
Each entrance was at one of the piers, and we removed the tin together. I handed Chris a jacket with veil, and together we unscrewed the tin and pulled the insulation to reveal the first of the hives. The two remaining hives were healthy. As I began to remove comb, I shared some of the bright, light-colored comb with Chris.
“I know it is weird for the father of a two-year old boy to say, but especially before he came along, well… I don’t do well with sticky.”
Chris had agreed to help with the removal, but there were multiple reasons for reluctance. The stickiness was certainly part of it, but it was also the repeated lessons of decades running from and swatting the stinging insects defending their lairs. As we worked, he never once shied away from the task, but the mistrust of the veil was obvious. Every girl that came towards his face earned a swat at the air, and at least a couple of steps back.
I have to admit to being impressed, though. Despite his stated reluctance, he kept close and continued working with me throughout the morning and into the early afternoon. And it was a LOT of work. We cut down five 5-gallon buckets of honeycomb, and we re-homed the few pieces of comb that had brood in them to a box, banded carefully in place. We ziplocked pretty comb to be shared, and everyone who came by received some to try some (a neighbor by the name of Johnny Lindigren promptly got chased off by honeybees that were still hostile about being turned into refugbees).
And then with the final vacuum, we finished up the removal and splashed back across the creek.
About the time the temperature started dropping. For the next few days, I kept working to extract the honey under conditions which were decidedly not conducive to honey flow. But the girls have been recovering all of the honey as I feed it back to them, and they are enthusiastic about defending their new home.
I still will refuse all except the most dire of winter removals, but I am no longer as pessimistic about the removal if the cause is good, as this one clearly was.
I appreciate Chris allowing me to do the removal. And I hope that the bees decide that his camp is less attractive from now on.
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