Tornado Bees

Rolling Fork, MS, was hit by an EF4 tornado. The town is destroyed. Cars on top of houses. Tractor trailers thrown through houses. Houses on top of trucks. The entire town looks like a Hollywood set for a post-apocalyptic thriller.

Three days after the storm, one of my co-workers, a lovely woman who works as a security guard at the office, asked me if I remove bees. That she has a family who needs help in Rolling Fork.

Sure. I am looking to help. But not a whole lot of people are really looking for my archaeology skilz as they rebuild. But bees? I can help there.

I get the call from Reverend Thomas Parker. The bees are in a tree. The tree is on the house. The guys removing trees can’t get to removing trees when they are dodging bees. Bees and chainsaws, he explained, don’t mix.

I explain that bees and chainsaws don’t mix. And yet, somehow, I end up on Wednesday morning driving north with a borrowed chainsaw (hasty tutorial on how to get it started by Matt Mallard, and handed over) and an extra suit, in case someone else would be willing to run the chainsaw.

My first impression:

The tree was much bigger than I had anticipated. The fortunate fall had obliterated a carport, leaving the trailer mostly unscathed. But they were right. The bees would not be happy with the introduction of the sound of a chainsaw.

Normally, my approach is to remove the covering, reveal the bees, and then begin removing comb and bees. With this one, I wanted to spend as little time with the chainsaw as possible. It was, after all, only my third time using one…. in my whole life. Not exactly a mountain of training and safety lessons in those three episodes.

So I started with the vacuum. I had recently acquired a vacuum that would let me pull the bees directly into the box, and not require a transfer.

After a while of watching me make countless safety mistakes with the chainsaw (I am pretty sure you don’t try and pull the cord while the blade is between your legs…), Rev. Parker decided to brave the bees and come join me. “If you have an extra suit, I will come and give you a hand.” The next thirty minutes were spent with him trying to fit his XL frame into the L veil and jacket I had in my truck.

Once he had shrugged it and a pair of windbreaker pants, he was ready to help.

Eventually I had cut away enough of the tree to expose the comb and enough of the bees had been trapped by the box to where the final removal of the comb could take place. Most of the comb had been emptied, with a combination of the trauma of the tree fall and the exposure of the comb to the elements – the girls had very industrially made use of their time and pulled all of the remaining honey and then built a small amount of comb oriented upright, and then stashed their honey in that location. I ended up pulling a few pieces of comb for the Parkers to try. And then, after a brief prayer with the family, went back to deposit the bees in my backyard.