THE BEE HIVE

Photographs from the recent installation of bees rescued from an elementary school yard onto Jerry's roof. They were placed into a temporary home (cardboard box), and over the course of two weeks sat over their new hive until the time was right for the humans to move them. We carefully transferred the bees, who had already built 5 good sized brood combs (the Queen has been busy laying lots of babies, which is good, as the hive is still quite small and they need workers). So the combs were carefully cut from where they connected to the top of the cardboard box and placed into frames held in place by kite string. The bees will eventually attach the comb to the wooden frames and then remove the kite string on their own! If they take to their new home, they will fill up more frames with broodcomb and honeycomb!

Thanks to Kirk of The Backwards Beekeepers for establishing an club dedicated to rescuing bees from the clutches of exterminators and training people to be beekeepers who let the bees do what they do, with little interference.

More about how this hive goes soon!
 

Kirk makes a cut in the box hive to open it up.

Inside the bees have built 5 rows of comb

  
         
 

Trevor and Kirk on the roof prepare the smoker

  

Smoke "calms" the bees - instinct tells them their hive is on fire, so they concentrate on eating honey to store up in case they have to move out!

  
         
 

Kirk and I cut some of the comb and laid it into the frames

  

See the brood comb? The puffy white cells are full of larvae waiting to become bees.

  
         
 

The bees were tapped out onto their new home, the rest of the comb was cleaned up and we'll check on them again soon to see how they are doing.