Early this morning we received another call for a swarm of bees to be removed. This time in Grants Pass. Breakfast in the car and away we go! (wanted to get it captured before the sun warmed everything up.)
Arriving the resident informed us that they first noticed the swarm a day ago, swarming into the center column of a patio table on their gazebo. When I knelt down you could sure hear LOTS of active bees inside the table, and a few were flying around the top where the table umbrella normally slips in. Time to suit up!
First I tried to turn over the table to get into it, but the bottom was closed also except for a one inch hole, so the only option was to disconnect the top of the table from the pedestal. The resident provided an electric screw gun and gave the ok to remove the top. Inside I found quite a few bees, some attached to the underside of the table and the bulk of the colony down inside the column. The ones under the top had already made a fresh honeycomb perhaps 2 inches across!
I pulled the accessible bees off the underside of the top and into a bucket, then added the bees I could get to inside the column. Then we set it all down and watched. Unfortunately there seemed to be more interest in the column than in the bucket, so the queen was not inside the bucket. A couple more attempts of scraping the bees out with the soft bee brush was needed before the flying workers finally gave more interest to the bucket than the column. At that point the rest was easy. I left a small crack on the bucket and just kept pulling the bees out or dumping them out with light taps, and let them find their way to the bucket. After about 20 minutes most of hte bees had settled inside the bucket happily. We did end up with a small mound on the cement which I scraped up with a plastic clipboard and dropped into the bucket.
One added tool this time was a spray bottle filled with sugar-water. Spraying this on the sitting bees certainly calmed them down and slowed the wings so they don't fly as fast or high. That made them much easier to keep in the bucket without re-swarming. Important to watch overuse though, everything gets sticky!
Once we got home we moved one of hte Top Bat Hives into the orchard and set it next to the worm fence. Here the bees would be more distant from traffic, plenty of fresh flowers in the garden and orchard, and still easily accessible. We will have to watch the heat in the summer though, since there is minimal shade there.
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First inspection showed a broom handle in the center hole of the table where the bees had taken up residence.
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| Tipping the table on it's side hopefully of a hollow bottom, but no luck. |
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| The anxious photographers! |
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| Off to work removing the screws holding the top on. |
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| More Screws! |
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| And more screws! This table was built! |
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| Finally success! The buzzing gets quite loud here! |
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| Setting the table top aside to work on the column where most of the bees are. |
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| Both Hunter and Kaelyn are fascinated by bee swarms. |
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