Tom's Bees

This past Monday was a very exciting day for us.  A few weeks ago, Mark’s friend, Tom, noticed bees in the siding of his house and scheduled a bee removal company to extract the bees.  The bee extractor came on Monday, and Mark and Tom were able to be there for the extraction process.  Unfortunately, I missed out on all of the excitement, as I could not get away from the office, but Tom took great photos to share. 

 

The bees were lodged in Tom’s house, beneath a front window.  They seemed very happy in place and may have been there since spring.   

Tom's house, with bees at home beneath the window.

Matt, from the bee removal company, sawed the siding away from underneath the window and used a special vacuum that allows for low suction and does not harm the bees.  They were vacuumed into a small cage that makes for easy transporting.  

 

The bees are being vacuumed into a screened cage.

Behind the siding, the comb was loaded with honey.  

 

The bees had produced a lot of honey. 
(Click on photo for larger view).

Mark and I had fair warning from Tom that we stood a chance in keeping Tom’s bees and placing them in our empty hive 03 on Doug and Linda’s property.  We were very excited about this possibility, because we were so heartbroken at our loss of hive 03 a few weeks ago.  I prepared a few gallons of sugar water the night before the extraction and Mark loaded up his SUV with all of our bee supplies, just in case we were able to keep the bees.  With a little arm-twisting, Matt agreed, and Mark and Tom immediately made the drive to Caldwell to place Tom’s bees in their new hive. 

 

Mark was able to salvage a lot the comb, which was dripping with honey and very messy.  He removed the foundation from four frames and put the comb in place, holding it together with rubber bands. 

 

Mark removed the foundation in four frames.

This frame holds combs full of honey.

They added two one-gallon frame feeders with sugar water into the lower of the two deep hives.  They also added two frames with the foundation still in place for the bees to draw new comb.  Mark and Tom added a second deep hive and placed several jar feeders full of sugar water above the bees.  They will have plenty of food, in addition to all of the honey they had produced already.

 

The top deep hive holds sugar water. 
The lower hive holds frames with brood and honey.

We are especially excited about this colony, because we believe they may be Russian bees, as that is what Matt suggested.  When we first started beekeeping, we read that Russian bees were somewhat aggressive and difficult to manage.  Mark did say that these bees seemed more impatient than our Italian/Buckfast hybrid bees.  On the other hand, we have also read that Russian bees are more resistant to varroa mites and other pests. 

 

Our new hive 03 with Tom's bees installed.  Notice Mark is
holding the vacuum cage, which was used to transport the bees to Caldwell.

Our only concern that we have about the new bees is with regard to the queen.  We do not know for sure if she was vacuumed into the cage to make the journey to Caldwell.  We have ordered a new queen as a backup plan.  She is a Russian/Italian hybrid that will be mailed to us from Kelley Bees out of Clarkson, Kentucky.  We expect to receive the queen in one week.  If we discover that we in fact did capture the original queen, then we will leave her in place and install the new Russian/Italian queen in hive 02, as our current queen in that hive has proven to be a poor laying queen.