Bee Tree/Hike Inn

My wife (Lisa) and I took a couple of days off for our 18th anniversary this year and went hiking up to Hike Inn. It's a great place to go if you love hiking and the outdoors. On our 5 mile hike up to the lodge I heard something and stopped. My wife jokingly ask, "What do you hear bees?" "Actually yes I do", I answered. It only took a moment to find the bee tree about 30 feet off the hiking trail.

4-27-12 Removal

These ladies made their way into this wall from the window. The brick exterior had pulled away from the wall and gave them more than enough room to move right in. This is also another case where bees had been before. At some point in the past a colony of honey bees had lived in this wall.

Look at how dark the wood is in this picture. Honey bees cover everything in their hive with propolis (aka bee glue) Propolis is plant rosin (tree sap). Just as it protects plants when a limb is cut off from bacteria and fungus the bees use it to prevent fungus and bacteria from hurting their hive.

Again look at how dark the inside of the wall is. This new colony did not have time to cover the interior of their new home with propolis. If you look real close you can see some of the white marks where wax moths larva had built their cocoons into the Sheetrock on the right and left side.  

4-25-12 Two at one time!

We do see this a couple of times every year. Two different bee colonies in the same house and close to each other at the same time. We do charge more for two removals, although in this case we did not since exposing one also exposed the other and the relative simplicity of the job.

People often ask if colonies will establish and build close to one another. Well as you can see the answer is yes. In the most extream cases I've seen them share a roof of the bay window. It almost looked like they were one colony with the amount of traffic of bees back and forth between the two colonies which for the most part were sitting side by side.

Righty

Lefty

4-22-12 Old and New

This colony is new, but you can see the old honey comb from past colonies that have lived in the same spot. This one had moved in about 3 weeks prior to us coming out and removing them.

This is a good view of the older comb (left and right) with some newer comb being built in the middle (white)

I know I'm wearing gloves...this removal was done during the black berry winter of 2012. It looks warm, but it was actually about 38 degs. when we did this removal.

4-17-12 Cool Old House

Brick wall, slate roof and 2 stories off the ground....nothing easy about this one.

4-16-12 Removal

Here's a removal we did where the bees were in the wall of a garage.

The bees entered the wall where a hole was cut during construction. Apparently (according to the writing on the wall) an electrical wire (orange wire above) was to go to the well. Not sure which wire was powering the well pump but it wasn't the orange one.  

4-6-12 Outside Wall

This colony had been in this wall for a couple of years.

The odd looking square cut in the siding to the right is where a door use to be. It had been removed and the siding placed over the opening.

This is the wall covering that was under the siding. You can also see the door and old door opening in the picture.

4-3-12 Bay Window Roof

The fellow on the ladder is Jacob our newest helper. He's working out quite well so far this year. The colony despite the looks is absolutely HUGE! The bees/hive just kept going back into the roof. We ended up using 2 baskets to collect all the bees and I put them into a double deep hive when we got back to the bee yard. I'd easily say there were 40 - 50 thousand bees in this newly established colony.

3-29-12 Siding

Here is a somewhat small (15,000 or so bees) colony in this concession stand wall. There were several thousand dead bees inside the building.

2-27-12 Bay Window

There is plenty of room in bay windows. Here is a new colony that just moved into the bottom or floor of this bay window.

3-14-12 Wall

Here is a typical wall removal. I also included the finish of the job. We don't do finish work (sanding/painting). The home owner will have to come back after the joint compound or "mud" dries and sand the joints. They will then need to reapply some more joint compound and sand again. The last thing they will need to do is paint.

3-14-12 Bee Tree

Bee trees really stink. I generally give an honest effort to remove honey bees from trees but today was a little too much. On the upside the colony swarmed the day before.

In the photos below you can see my tallest ladder which is 40 feet long! I had it extended as far as she would go and to be honest it would have been better if it was a few feet taller.

3-12-12 Removal

This colony didn't do a great job of picking their new home. The dryer vent pipe inside the wall had slipped away from the flapper/opening. The swarm was planning on using this to gain access into the floor system. I'm not sure why they didn't move into the floor system (may be the queen missed the opening). Anyway, they had already built a small section of comb and were working hard to start a new home right there in the open. Thanks Amanda for taking the pics and sending them to me!

2-29-12 Removal

This bee removal was a little different than I expected. The concrete blocks were only 4 inches thick instead of the normal 8 inches. The original building design had the window larger. After the basement walls were completed the builder must have decided to make the window smaller. They used the smaller 4 inch blocks to fill in the lower portion of the window opening leaving a large void between the outside brick and the block.

2011 Removals

WOW! This will complete all of my archived removals. I wish I could have posted each and every one, but to be honest it would just take to long to up load pictures from every removal I've done in the past.

This very old school house is part of a historic community called Shields-Ethridge Heritage Farm.
http://shieldsethridgefarminc.com/

These bees were in a wall in South Georgia.

After we remove the bees we put the sheet rock back in place and will put the first coat of spackling (mud) over the cracks.

The same job as above, where we had to open the siding on the outside as well. These bees had been there for a very long time. You can see the black stain on the brick. This is from where old colonies had died out and the old honey fermented and ran down the wall. It will take years (if ever) for this mold to stop growing on the bricks.

This colony was under a mobile home. 

Even though this is the first column that I've posted about we generally do at least one a year. This one is interesting. In the picture below you can see the old marks on the ceiling...this is from where honey comb was attached to the ceiling in the past. (so at one time there was an exposed colony attached to the ceiling)

Columns are cut open like a pie or cake. We slice a section out to get it open the remove the bees/hive. Afterward we put the column back together and fill in the cut marks.