We Saved Bees From a Couch!!

Hey everyone, well let's just say that my life continues getting more and more interesting. We have to date saved bees from a plethora of places, but an old couch? This certainly was a first and as far as entertainment value goes one of the best. What a fantastic night we had full of laughs, fun and we got bees!

I recently started placing ads on gumtree olx etc for paid bee removals. We get so many calls and can't be everywhere at once, so I thought why not start charging folks for this service and so that is what I did.

Turns out, the client did not have any money, which is ok because we normally and to date did this service for free, what we did do however is take a few bottles of honey with us and he took some of those, a win all round.

This was the 'couch' in question. I am not too sure what this chap is still doing with what resembles a couch but he seems rather 'attached' to this thing. The bees are situated right there in the corner can you see them?

When we arrived at the premesis saw a few bees on the outside and thought oh no this is not going to be a successful evening based on what we assumed to be a small swarm, you know what they say about assumptions right?

We gently smoked the bees at the entrance with the old faithful bee smoker and pine needles and got to work.

These bees were super passive, normally they attack us this was not the case tonight, how pleasant!

What a stunning surprise to have removed this back board and expose these amazing capped combs and capped honey. This swarm has been here for 6 weeks max. They have done a great job in such a short time and are developing very nicely.

I was rather surprised to see the bees build one of the combs from a 'backstrap' on the couch. They normally build their combs on very solid foundations this was the first time I saw them build on something as 'flimsy' as this it did seem to hold up nicely however. With time and more weight on the combs I imagine this may have caused problems for the swarm as these combs would start hanging lower and possibly the strap breaking under the weight, but we mitigated that for them and the homeowner!

Now when I say this couch was 'wrecked' IT WAS as can be seen from this pic. The homeowner had such a sentimental attachment to this couch for whatever reason. Once we were done with the rescue it looked much worse than this I assure you. The super sucker which makes our job so much easier and pleasant also in this pic.

This was by no means the biggest bee swarm we have saved to date, but a nice and productive swarm never the less. We filled up half of one of our catcher boxes as below and had 5 nice combs from the couch which we returned to a new hive and installed in the frames!

This is the final step to the rescue process, gently placing all their combs full of honey, larvae, eggs and pollen in new frames in their new hive. The last step is taking all the bees from the catcher box and placing them in their new hive.

This technique really is the best way to remove and relocate bees, it literally takes them a day or two to settle into their new home. We have a 100% success rate to date using this technique with developed swarms. Once or twice in the past we have lost a very small swarm, which sadly left to 'greener pastures'

I gently take the removed combs and place them in the new frames with elastic bands, in a few days the bees then re-attach the combs to the frame walls and chew off the elastic bands and expel from the hive, they really are incredibly clever. They work in numbers to remove the rubber band often we see these hanging out the entrance to the hive after a feral rescue, so interesting indeed.

Job successfully done and the bees are relocated to their new home, what we endearingly call 'Bee Paradise'

Be sure to stay tuned for more of my epic bee-keeping adventures.

Cheer$;)