LA Backwards Beekeeper Roberta writes:
Leah, a newbee, wanted to have bees and was fully prepared with hive boxes in her back yard. She also has a neighbor who is a beekeeper and can answer questions. Leah got her protective gear and just needed bees. We planned on meeting at 7am Saturday morning with a list calls to the Bee Rescue Hotline.
We went to Westchester to rescue a swarm in a water meter. It was Leah's first time putting her gear on so we took our time to make sure she knew what to do. We took a look under the lid and the comb was new and white, so very fragile. This made it too hard to tie in to frames, so we planned to lift the huge lid and then cut the comb to get the whole hive into the box all at once. This would pretty much guarantee that we would get the queen. We spent about 30 minutes prepping and then the transfer took about 30 seconds.
On the way back we checked out a trap-out from the exterior wall of a house I had set-up a couple of days ago. The bees had entered in a hole at the corner of window.
I had set it up a couple of days ago. When we got there, there were bees all over the side of the wall! What a mess. Maybe the box was full. When I set-up the trap out, the interior house wall (a foot by foot area) was almost hot to the touch.
We checked again and it was a lot cooler so maybe we had got a majority of the bees out. I told the homeowner that I would come back in the evening to change the box. I dropped off Leah at her car to take her bees home.
Boy, what a day of bees, love it.
—roberta
