"Don't Kill The Bees!"

A Few Bees....

Last Monday we started noticing a few honey bees crawling in and out of the small hole in the city's water meter box in the parkway strip between the sidewalk and the street in our front yard.

There were enough of them flying around for us to conclude that a swarm was forming a hive in the box.

We knew the city would just kill them if the water meter reader reported the hive in the box; they have to look out for the safety of their workers.  But we felt that since we've planted flowers and shrubs to attract pollinators, we should try to keep the bees alive.  Cindy would like to have a hive, but we couldn't just move this hive to the back yard because they have to be moved at least five miles or they will go back to the original hive location.

So Cindy called a fellow Master Gardener who keeps bees.  She agreed to come out and move them to one of her hives, so we put up a sign to warn neighbors to leave them alone.  So now we're codependent to bees, as well as caterpillars, I guess.

We were fascinated by the whole process of removing the bees and, judging by the number of neighbors who drove past to watch with their jaws dropping, so was the whole neighborhood.  We're hoping that if the neighbors find a swarm on their property, they'll call the San Diego Beekeeping Society and get a beekeeper to remove the swarm, rather than just calling an exterminator to kill the bees.

After donning her protective suit and hood, the beekeeper gently brushed the bees and decorative bark off the water meter cover, then lifted it off.

We were stunned to see how many bees there were inside the box--there were hundreds of them, a great, crawling black mass of them attached to the honeycombs they had started to form on the underside of the lid of the water meter box.  We had no idea there were so many in there.

The beekeeper carefully detached the honeycombs crawling with bees and lifted them into a bucket appropriately titled "Scoop Away".  The beekeeper told us that the white color of the honeycomb showed that it was still a very new hive.

Once she had the queen and the honeycombs in the bucket, the beekeeper backed off to let the remaining bees settle down a bit.  Fortunately, these were not Africanized bees, they were just nice gentle honey bees.  Otherwise I would have had to retreat to the house and take pictures from inside, but they didn't bother me at all.

Then it was a matter of collecting as many of the rest of the bees as possible.  The beekeeper explained to us that some of the bees that were left behind, including those that were still out foraging, would simply die, but that most of those were in the last week of their six to eight week life cycle anyway.

They Know The Queen Is In There

That was sad to hear (see "codependent" above), but we were glad to know the hive would be going to a good home.

Finally the beekeeper put the cover back on the water meter box, covered the box with a black plastic trash bag and put bark over the bag to keep foraging bees from trying to get back into the box.

Clean Up

A final spray with some soapy water to change the scent of the area and take care of the few remaining bees, and the hive was on its way to its new home.