Greetings!
I come to you as an extreme New Bee. I have been interested in having my own hive for many years. I never thought I would have the opportunity when I decided to move to Los Angeles, almost 6 years ago. It has been an unexpected adventure. Though the bees currently seem productive and happy in our backyard, the adventure getting them here was much harder on them than it should have been.
It all started a week ago; my neighbor discovered a hive in a hose box she has by her front house (she rents out the front house and lives in a Mother-in-Law house in the back.) She just started renovating the front after her last tenants left. She was kind enough to give me and my boyfriend the opportunity to move them, with a plan to re-house them in a Langstroth hive. Definitely an advanced endeavor for beginners, but I couldn't help but jump at the opportunity to have a local colony.
So I started researching how we could accomplish the task; how to move the box, how to ensure the bees would successfully reorient, what equipment we need, hive formation and order, contacted some local bee keepers for assistance, et cetera.
Our neighbor did not give us as much time to prepare as we had hoped, telling us after a few days that she wanted them gone immediately or she was going to spray them. Thankfully, we convinced her it would have to be after sundown. We could not convince her to wait until the professional help we had sought could meet with us. My boyfriend was able to put leafy branches on the top where the bees appeared to be entering to try and preemptively disorient them before he had to go to work. Unfortunately, we both did not get home until late in the evening and could not do much else to prepare the feral hive for moving.
Although my boyfriend had been shown the box (it's about 2'x3'x2') he had not had the opportunity to see the exact state of the box. Our neighbor also did not tell us that the bottom was broken off save for one small section and that a spigot was positioned inside the box in a way where you had to move the box over and up before it could be released. Not such fun facts to find out when you have already disrupted an established colony after dark...let me tell you.
I'll set the scene:
it's 9-10pm, two newBees with a smoker they've only practiced with once, tape, a drill, staple gun and cloth in lieu of screening to try and block any hive entrances, one proper veil between them (for whatever reason the veils shipped separately as I wanted one connected to a jacket) my boyfriend has resorted to a mesh laundry bag to secure on his head. We have proper leather bee gloves and lumpy ankles where we have tucked our jeans into our socks (or two pairs of socks in my case).
All is quiet near the hive (as expected). We quietly try to determine where any gaps large enough for entrance are. When shining our lights underneath we finally hear some buzzing and know the ladies are aware of us. That's when we discover there is no bottom on the box. My boyfriend takes measurements as the ladies are starting to form at the top entrance, curious as they are. At this point the box is humming. He cuts some board and reinforces with sheet rock as a make shift bottom. Knowing this is gonna get a little hairy, I get the smoker going and give them a couple puffs in the top entrance, and then a few underneath the box. Not ideal to try and get this box moved and reinforced with a bottom at night, but at this rate we are trying to 1. save them 2. disrupt them as little as possible while not drawing it out.
We carefully cut the hose sticking out the top, brush the bees forming at the top entrance and drill in the top of the box, leaving only a small strip of space as an entry/exit point. We gently life the box and attempt to move it onto the new bottom and...it's stuck on something.... To our dismay we discover the spigot coming from the ground and going into the box. We tried moving the box a few different directions to release it but could not get the spigot out. The bees are rioting at this point and the box is not stable without the bottom. We admit defeat and head home...scout bees following us. I'm happy to say only 1 sting that night, my boyfriend had taken his gloves off and one bee crawled up his sleeve when we were trying to move the box.
We convinced our neighbor to give us another day. My boyfriend was able to go in the afternoon and get the box released from the hose and the bottom put on. My jacket had come that day so we both had proper veils for the night endeavor. Aside from one unexpected exit point on one side and having to block it up and losing some of the bees to the night, we were able to get the box onto a rolling metro rack and wheel it over to our yard. If that paragraph made it sound like it was a piece of cake the second night move...it was not...but certainly easier than the previous night.
We positioned the box on top of a picnic table under an ornamental pepper tree (that bees seem to love) in partial shade. Entrance is facing sunrise.
Originally our plan was to have a box on hand (our Langstroth was still in the mail), get professional assistance cutting the feral hive into the box, house them 3+ miles away for a few weeks and then move them back to our house to ensure reorientation. But in the haste imposed on us we relied solely on using branches to disorient them and left the hive on lockdown for the night. I would have liked to contain them for 3 days, as advised, but there was no place we could house them in order to do that.
Cue to the next morning...my boyfriend cuts through the cloth that we had stapled around the entrance. He describes that he was quietly cutting the cloth, hearing no noise. As soon as the cloth was off, a sound much like a machine gun burst from the box as bees poured out. Those were some angry angry bees, he did get stung a few times from that encounter.
That same day we had a group of bees forming on the garage. I was afraid the bees had absconded because of how disruptive we had been during the 2 day move. After checking the box, there were still lots of bees visible within, so perhaps it was a swarm.
our Neighbor said there were bees still by her house, we checked and it seemed like only enough to have been the escapees from the previous night. We waited until night to put a homemade bee trap where the previous hive was (we only caught a few).
It's been a few days and we are extremely fortunate that the bees did reorient. They seem happy to have the tree directly above them that is in full flower. It's a bit hypnotizing watching them flying back and forth between the hive and the branches above.
The next adventure will be cutting the comb and transplanting them to a box. We are giving it a couple of weeks to let them fully settle before we disrupt them again. I'm eager to see the hive and inspect the comb.
Topic: Greetings and Unexpected New Bee-ginnings from Venice, CA (Read 2013 times)