Hey everyone, what can I say? I am officially the saviour of bees, many many swarms of beautiful bees. I wish I could through this good work increase the knowledge and vital importance of us all having the responsibility to do our bit to preserving these precious creatures.
Bees are the second most studied species on Earth right behind humans, that un-like humans are the MOST VITAL chain in the link to the natural biological eco-system and life on Earth, yet people to this day still destroy them? It is a sacrilege to say the very least, as well as total stupidity and ignorance, I plan to do what I can to change that.
We recently received a call from a customer who had a massive swarm in his roof that had been there for 2 years and had now become a big problem. When bees get larger in size (swarm numbers) and store more honey they tend to become more protective and aggressive at this point we generally receive many phone calls. Our service is free we do not charge a cent. What we do, is ask the folks whom we rescue bees from to buy a bottle or two of honey from us albeit not making any profit yet but This helps us continue our good work and save more bees.
Often we receive calls from folks who sadly lie to us. We always ask if they have previously used poison and time and again the answer is no. Sadly often this is a lie, on this occasion the same was true. These folks initially hired another non experienced clown to remove these bees, he ended up killing half the swam and all the brood, when we got on this site there were thousands of dead bees on the ground, the ceiling was open already, BUT there we luckily still many bees living so we had to act fast.
We sucked these bees up, and headed off to our second site. When one is faced with a situation as we were on this evening with tens of thousands of bees and no comb or brood to install into their new hive a creative plan is needed and FAST, to ensure the survival of these bees.
We opened up one of our established swarms smoked them a little and removed a frame full of eggs, brood and larvae. We then put these in the new hive and added these bees around 30 000 in total at an estimate.
The secret to re-integrating bees with 'foreign' comb is to smoke them at night, as to confuse the bees and mask the comb, by the time the smoke settles and dawn arises the bees have normally already adopted their brood and carry on regardless. We have now done this twice with great success and continue to save bees in this fashion is certainly on the cards!
I took a video of these bees too which I shall post later, so nice to see so many bees in one spot. These bees because of poisoning and loss of great numbers had gone into 'suicide' mode had we not come here to rescue them they faced certain death. They would have literally hung here till they starved and died, we had to give them a new reason to live and we did. By removing them from this environment taking them to a lovely new site full of food out in the bush, putting them in a new hive with new comb re-invigorates their will to live and by the next morning were happy and active again, such a great feeling and lovely to see.
This is our brand of honey, we currently only get about 20 bottles a month but are growing all the time, because our swarms are all very new they first need to establish themselves before producing excess honey this takes 3-5 months depending on swarm size in a good honey flow.
We now have 35 swarms they should all be in full production in 4 months odd this should push our production up to at least 250 bottles of raw natural honey pure and good just how nature intended. The future looks bright, I am totally in awe and appreciation of the African Killer Honey Bee (Apis Millifera Skutellata)
Have a lovely weekend and be sure to stay tuned for more of my epic bee-keeping adventures.
Cheer$:)
Good job. Do you put any newspaper or anything between the box with the new bees and the old hive to help with the introduction? Always enjoy learning how other beekeeps do stuff.
No bud we have not yet physically mixed live bees with that strategy we have mixed live bees before just smoked them and they integrated fine. That does work I hear where did you hear that, mostly folks that read the bee bible know that trick? Cheer$;)
Commercial beekeeps I know take bees from a weak hive in a hive body and sit it on top of another stronger hive with newspaper in between. Theory is they get used to the new queen's pheremones in the time before they get through the paper. A few small knife cuts through the paper are supposed to help the bees get started on an opening. Then they do a pretty good job of removing all the paper. I've done this once and it worked.
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