Urban Bees In All The Wrong Places
August 8, 2012 
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Urban Bees
Today I went out to remove some honey bees from the wall of an older shed
Since we are just one day away from being thorough in the middle of a heat wave… triple digit temperatures! I wanted to get an early start at removing these bees and get them home and into a new hive before it got too hot, so I plotted on a 6am start time.
Well as these things sometimes do, I had a slightly trying time finding the house.
When I got there I was told that a family friend had removed the top board and had plotted on simply taking a spade to the bees hive and scraping it off the wall! Well of way the bees did not wish to stand for that kind of incursion!
Once the first board came off they went on the defensive and the friend received a couple of stings, but the poor dog on the adjoin porch apparently took several before he was brought inside the house. Sometime after that someone place some “crime scene tape” across the bees hive as a warning, I guess to any would be spade carrying humans to steer clear of the area.
Crazy things seem to happen when Urban bees wind up in the incorrect places!
This is the exposed Bees hive in the wall of a shed
The family was below the impression that the smallish section of bees hive that they could see was as far as it extended down the side of the shed. But of way, after I smoked them down and removed the side boards I found that they occupied an area of in this area 4′ x 4′ or 2 full sub-sections and 2 more partial sub-sections.
Given the incursion to these bees hive a day or so earlier, and my taking the cover boards off, they wernt really all that terrible. I did take a sting to my chin though when removing a board and the tree got in my way, allowing my beekeeping veil to in tears my face. Ah well, whats a bee confiscation without at least one sting anyhow?
It took me in this area 2 hours to remove all the bees and comb, the full right side of the hive was all honeycomb and most of the left side of the bees hive was all brood with nearly half of a full page on one side of drone brood. Since there is a nice mixture of drone and worker bees brood in this hive I am not too worried in this area the health and fertility of the queen, and the sheer number of bees in this hive was staggering.
I to the top both beevac buckets with bees!
Note to self… make a couple more buckets to fit into the beevac!
While doing the confiscation of these bees from the shed wall, I carefully attach the brood comb into deep langstroth frames and secure them in place with rubber bands, I also insure a nice supply of nurse bees stay into the nuc box along with this comb to insure that the bees brood have the best chance for survival once they are placed into their new home.
I took along a large styrofoam tote to place the honeycomb into and it was really full by the time I was finished! I gave the homeowner a large part of the honeycomb along with directions on how to process it into tasty, sterile honey.
Then bees and I were on our way back to my house before it got too hot, and they were placed into a spacious top bar beehive, I placed a deep super on top of the hive to hold the frames of nurse bees with brood. Then the bees in the beevac were misted down with a honey water spray and poured into the top bar beehive over the super with brood comb.
After that the full hive was closed up and the bees were left alone for the rest of the day. When I tartan on them (without opening the hive) in this area the time my other hives are coming in for the night from the last foraging forays, everything looked excellent and they seem to be settling in nicely.
Urban Bees need more urban beekeepers!
We subdue live in a time when people try to strong arm nature and get into distress. Bees are shared insects that are set to defend their homes, just as we are set to defend our own homes, and they pack a powerful sting to back up their territorial claim!
Too often we look to pesticides as a earnings of control and confiscation when there are alternative measures that can be taken that will not only benefit the homeowner but the bees as well.
Exterminators use perilous environmental poisons to eradicate a homeowners problem, often charging by the pound of bees killed!
When our honey bees are facing such problems as Colony Collapse Disorder, Habitat Loss, Mites, Hive Beetles, Pesticides and more, does it really make sense to kill them?
What to do if you find bees on your property and you want them removed
There are many places on the internet where beekeepers can post that they remove nuisance beehives, as well as beekeepers in the yellow pages, craigslist, and more.
Don’t try to remove bees physically!
Dredge up what I said in this area bees being shared insects? Mess with the bees hive without proper protective gear and I can pretty much guarantee you will be stung at least once!
Don’t try to spray insecticide on the bees hive either, this will really send them into a frenzy and you and anyone else in the nearby vicinity could be stung, perhaps repetitively!
The Practical Beekeeper Volume I, II & III Beekeeping Naturally
by: Michael Bush
publisher: X-STAR PUBLISHING COMPANY, published: 2011-06-16
ASIN: 1614760640
EAN: 9781614760641
sales rank: 29244
price: $44.99 (new), $58.80 (used)
This book is in this area how to keep bees in a untreated and practical system where they do not require treatments for pests and diseases and only minimal interventions. It is also in this area simple practical beekeeping. It is in this area reducing your work. It is not a main-stream beekeeping book. Many of the concepts are contrary to “conventional” beekeeping. The techniques presented here are streamlined through decades of experimentation, adjustments and simplification. The make pleased was written and then refined from responding to questions on bee forums over the years so it is tailored to the questions that beekeepers, new and experienced, have. It is divided into three volumes and this journal contains all three: Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced.
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