Rescue Bee

This blog is more for my own education than anything else. Educational it is: I've always thought the vibrant Motown classic "Rescue Me" was Martha and the Vandellas, but the artist was Fontella Bass. Now I know. I invite you to have a listen to her as you read this entry.

More education: Honeybee rescue! Yes, you don't have to slaughter a misplaced hive. At least here, in some of southern California, someone will come out for a modest amount of money (less than an exterminator!) and give your bees a new home, where they can forage and make honey as they were born to do. My neighbor found that one of her concrete sprinkler valve boxes had become home to a large number of highly ambitious bees--the box was runneth over with honey. Rather than killing them all, she phoned around and found Angel's Honey Farm, who was happy to come out and relocate the hive. Here's the valve box after the honey combs were removed. A bee was still checking it out.



The rescue took two days. First, the bee people brought out a barrel with a lock on lid. A hole in the lid with a screen on it but not blocking it, allows the bees to come and go from the barrel.



They placed the barrel near the valve box. Then they put some smoke into the valve box, to make the bees sleepy. They removed the queen and some honeycomb, and placed her carefully inside the barrel. Then they removed the remainder of the honey combs, a large amount. Pints of honey. The bee rescuer said it probably only took them three weeks to make that much honey.




The bees began returning to the queen in her barrel, instead of to the valve box. They were left to do this for 24 hours, so that all the bees would have time to learn to return to the barrel and abandon the valve box.



Bees return to the hive around sunset, after their day of labor, and they spend the night in the warmth of the hive. Just around sunset the following day, the bee recuer returned to the bee filled barrel, covered the hole in the barrel with a cap, and loaded the hive onto a truck for a journey to a new home and continued honey making.

Saving a healthy hive instead of killing it: doesn't that make you want to dance a Bee Barrel polka? (Yes, I should be stung for that).

Angel's Honey Farm can be contacted at: (714) 606-9539

http://www.angelshoneyfarms.com

Please note that I have no connection whatsoever to Angel's Honey Farm. This is NOT an ad. My neighbor told me about it, and I just think relocation is a far superior thing to extermination, so I'm blogging about it. That is all.