Bees retrieved from chimney

We did our first actual hive retrieval today. These bees had taken up residence in a chimney of a family in Grants Pass and were causing trouble occasionally sneaking into the house. They invited us to attempt to save hte bees while extracting them and we decided to go for it.

First let me say again that all of hte people we have retrieved bees from have been the nicest people ever. I am constantly impressed at the people we meet through the bee harvesting process!

We showed up at their place in the evening about an hour before sundown. Most of the bees had returned already. Inspection showed a LOT of honeycomb just below the fireplace cap (a plate covering hte original fireplace and holding the pipe from the inner chimney in place). The plate was not attached so a little prying with a wrecking bar loosened it up to peak under.

First I removed the chimney hat and upper flange, leaving only the plate in place. A little cutting freed up the plate from the comb, which was attached tightly to the side of hte chimney and the inner pipe.  the bees started protesting about now!

This hive was much larger than I anticipated! The honeycomb covered about three quarters of the chimney and extended down about 3 feet attached to the pipe and perhaps another 3 feet hanging below. It was packed solid with both honeycomb and brood comb.

I decided to extract by using a machete to cut the comb away from the stone fireplace wall, leaving it attached to the inner pipe. Slowly cutting as to not damage any more bees or comb than necessary. Once it was all loose, I twisted the inner pipe to free the top section from the one below.This was quite tricky to do without dislodging hte comb from the pipe. After a little working with it the pipe came free. Now hte hard part! I had to lift the top five foot section straight up with all the honey still attached, and bees crawling all over it. That was harder than anticipated! At one point I was thinking it was not going to be possible, but perseverance paid off and I was able to lift the pipe and comb out of hte chimney. 

Unfortunately laying hte pip on the roof  damaged quite a bit of comb and Honey started leaking out everywhere. That made a mess  of bees covered in honey. I worked as fast as I could to cut the comb loose and place it into 5 gallon buckets knocking as many clean healthy bees as possible into the retrieval buckets.  There is a chance I saw the queen and got her but at this time it was too dark to tell for sure.

After getting all the bees and comb in to buckets as I could I checked hte chimney again. Disheartening was the fact that the entire chimney was filled with bees. the walls on all four side was solid bees all the way to the bottom. There was no way to retrieve them. Lower in the chimney was some more comb that had either fallen or was built below hte top pipe section. It was really tough to tell if the retrieval was successful since so many bees and some comb was left behind. Getting hte last of the comb would require pulling the fireplace insert from inside the fireplace, a job we were not equipped for this night.

Once we got home, I placed all the comb and bees in an empty top bar hive. The end boards were moved to the outside edges and only one entrance hole was left open, then I placed the comb into the bottom of the hive as carefully as possible towards the end away from the entrance hole. With all the top bars in place, we left it set to see what they would do.

Hopefully the bees will be able to recover from traumatic event and either make a new queen or find her somewhere in that mess of comb. Most of hte bees were so covered in honey they couldn't fly, but some were already cleaning off their neighbors, so perhaps there is hope!