Tuesday, June 28, 2016

"Speaker Swarm" rescued!

A friend of mine called me the other day about what he was a honey bee 'nest' in a junk floor speaker in his backyard.  I came over and took a peek.  Yes, it was a honey bee swarm that had taken up residence in a large floor speaker.  It was incredibly hot and they were bearding up on the out side.  I opened the speaker and the comb simply fell off as it was melting.  I put a board on top of it to give it some shade and came by later that night.  It was pretty cool and the bees were inside the speaker box.  I simply picked it up carefully and took it home.

The next day, I waited until it cooled off a bit and then re-hived them into a proper 8 frame box.
Quite a mess at first
I carefully opened the speaker box and dropped the 'main ball' of bees into the 8 frame box.  As you can see they were quite confused at first at this.

I sprayed sugar water (1 to 1 mix with lemongrass/peppermint/thyme essential oils) on the frames in the box and provided them with plenty of syrup.  You can see my 12 jar inner cover/feeder.  The jars are sitting on 1/8th hardware screen so I can change out a jar without disturbing the colony.
Up close view



















Here is an up close view.  They were fanning like crazy!














About an hour later, they settled down quite a bit.
They have consumed about a quart in a half of syrup in one day.  The heat really brought out their activity
Settling down now



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