BEES IMPORTANCE TO OUR BIO-DIVERSITY. POLICE STATION RESCUE!

Hey everyone, when you witness a feral swarm of bees in a pump house at a Police station you just know it is going to be a special rescue and it was. These bees had conveniently placed themselves in a borehole pump house at the local Police Station a few kms from where I stay. We are getting quiet well known in the area for our bee rescue expertise, so my partner recently got a call from the resident command officer for us to come around and 'work our magic' and so we did!

They called us up to come and remove these bees as they were now becoming aggressive stinging the police, bad thing? ;) Let's not go there..

We started off in the usual fashion by gently blowing some cold smoke into their hive to calm them down in readiness for what was about to occur, their safe relocation to a nice new hive in a nice prolific, high vegetation forage area.

Right after we smoke we start to suck with our super sucker featured here a few times before, that black pipe is the nozzle of the unit already sucked up a couple thousand bees at this point.

At first sight this rather interesting. These combs were wrapped around the pipes at the bottom, bees certainly do not build like this so what happened? What probably occurred here was someone lifted the lid, the combs fell off and onto the pipes. The bees would naturally have just repaired these and left them as they laid. Bees always build from the top down putting all the heavy material (honey) at the top and the lighter organic matter (eggs, larvae, pollen) lower on their combs.

Here we have my partner hard at work with his red light (less visible to most animals).

This below comb has capped brood as well as pollen and a few empty compartments which is not like the normal actions of a 'Good Queen' she normally lays in a symmetrical organized fashion, the reason this bottom comb is in disarray is more than likely because it is not hanging in a uniform fashion side by side like the other combs from the top, possibly confusing the Queen. The Queen may also have been killed and a 'Queen Layer or Laying Worker' could be at work here. Upon further inspection though the combs that we removed from the roof were nicely organized and brood clustered tightly together, so all was in order.

We always use a red light and work with the bees at night as this is reason for less disturbance to them, when I first saw the orange comb I thought it was just because of the red light making the white comb look orange, but alas, this comb really was orange but what was happening here? Honey taste and comb colour depends mostly upon what the bees forage, after we safely removed and re-hived these bees we tasted some of the excess honey, Orange's, too delicious for words.

There must be a citrus/orange plantation in this area, this would explain the comb colour and the honey taste, of the best honey I have ever tasted, it was truly magnificent!

You may be wondering why in all my bee rescue posts/pics are there just tons of comb and very few bees. The average swarm of Honey Bees are around 40 000 because we always start off by gently smoking them to calm them down they generally move as far from the smoke as they can and cluster in a corner. This means they are removed from the combs which makes life for us easier and minimizes their casualty rates too.

Are these combs just not too beautiful for words? The lighter the comb the newer the darker the older. These combs are all very new and many still needing to be filled with nectar, honey, eggs, pollen brood and more. Bees always work from inside out and in a circular fashion. I tell you what as far as nature and art goes, it does not get much prettier than this.

The thicker combs to the top left in this pic are mature capped raw honey the other combs will more than likely be filled with brood and eggs. Bees always put honey at the top and to the sides of their hives for storage and all their eggs and larvae in the middle for protection and to regulate temperature, truly incredible little creatures indeed.

Bees are incredibly clean hygienic insects, if they sense anything in their hive that is 'unclean' and that is too large for them to remove as a team they simply cover it with propolis. The inside top of this lid is covered with it (the black tar looking goo). Check more as per wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propolis

I love this picture, on the right all the gorgeous new wax combs filled up with, capped brood comb, eggs, larvae, nectar and pollen, honey at the top. The thicker combs on the right have raw, delicious mature capped honey!

Here we have what greeted us when we arrived on site. A plastic pump house, this was not too tough based on where we have saved bees from in the past, relatively straight forward actually which is very rare as bees are very smart and make their 'homes' in the weirdest and most wonderful of places. This borehole pump cover was segmented so after smoking the bees gently separating the parts was relatively straight forward!

We put these into their new hive and next morning woke up early to inspect them, half of them seemed to have settled in well the other half for some reason made a 'bee ball' on the bottom of the hive, this was not good as they were about to abscond and weaken this big swarm.

We could do nothing until night arrived, so we waited. That night we put on our bee suits and gently got another empty hive box and put it right next to this one, with a piece of cardboard opened the new hive and gently swept them in. We then added the other combs and frames with the original bees in the new hive and WHALLA. It worked like a dream, these bees had re-integrated and the next morning carried on foraging collecting pollen and nectar as if nothing had happened, what a joyous feeling of satisfaction and achievement!

Please be sure to always take care when dealing with bees they can be and are extremely dangerous especially our local 'African Killer Bee' which these are. Never EVER exterminate a swarm they are far to important and integral to our bio-diversity and general life on Earth for ALL creatures.

If you do have a feral swarm get in contact your local bee-keeper to come out and safely remove and relocate them. Bee numbers globally are declining at an alarming rate and it will take a massive public awareness to reverse this, please do spread the good word.

Be sure to stay tuned for more of my epic bee-keeping adventures.

Cheer$;)