- DSCN0585
A closeup of the bee nest. It looked like there would be a good 30,000 workers there (but in the end, my estimate would be about 20,000 max). - DSCN0587
A bit of smoke and bees retreated between the combs. 6:38 pm - DSCN0583
A student from MSU called me saying there was a large nest of wasps in her house and one can reach it. After seeing her picture, I told her it was honey bees, but if she really wanted to get rid of them, I could help. I thought it was about 6 ft from the ground and it would be easy since the nest was exposed. All my students decided to join the adventure and learn something about bee removal. Sept 5, 2002. 6:30 pm. - DSCN0611
We kept vacuuming the bees off while Nate was sitting above cutting combs. I would be scared in his position because the roof was not flat and his center of gravity was such that he could easily fall...17:30 pm - DSCN0589
I had three students (who were taking my bee course) who volunteered with me: Emily Jackson, William (Nate) Sneller and Bartek Majewski. I modified a nuc box so that bees can be trapped inside when hooked up to a vacuum. The bees are actually located on the 2nd story and we had to stay on a roof, and even then, the best is about 10 ft from us. - DSCN0603
Nate is brave! Even though he is alergic to bee stings, he still volunteered to be on the roof to cut the combs off so bees would not return the next day. 7:07 pm - DSCN0599
By now we figured we had 80% bees trapped inside the box. 6:54 pm - DSCN0607
With half of the combs gone. 7:27 pm. - DSCN0590
We took turns to be the 'bee-vaker' because hands (and neck!) got tired easily. Notice the long handle we put to guide the hose because it is simply too far for the soft vacuum hose to reach the bees. 6:42 pm - DSCN0593
And more vacuuming. 6:50 pm - DSCN0613
Surprisingly there was almost NO honey! I thought I would get 40 lbs of honey from the picture I saw. Lots of brood, some pollen, but - DSCN0619
About 20,000 bees inside the box. Ironically, these bees did not survive the winter, even after I 'pooled' them with another colony. Lesson: you are not getting much (unless there are lots of honey!) from the bees in Sept. Total time was about 80 minutes (not inlcuding the vacuum box construction). 7:47 pm - DSCN0620
I developed a strong reaction, perhaps because I ate one piece of comb which probably contained ragweed pollen. My foot started to itch on the way to the icecream store (someone suggested, well, normally this would be $200, but you can treat us icecream instead and we would not charge). By the time I got home, I had hives all over my body, and itched like $#@!. After scratching, the skin became red and swollen. I almost went to the emergency room, but took the risk and stayed home after some antihistimine medication. Lesson: do not eat bee pollen if you are allergic to pollen, even if only to wind pollen! 10:15pm