Bees on the move

A swarm of honey bees

Late spring and early summer is generally the time bees swarm. This is a natural process that happens: as bee numbers swell, the original hive becomes too small and so the colony will bred a new queen and half the hive will head off to find a new place to call home. While some are out looking for this new abode, the queen and the rest of her followers will ‘rest’, forming a large ball or mass. It sounds scary – there’s a lot of buzzing, obviously – but the bees are actually very docile in this state.
This swarm had decided to rest in a primary school field and arrived on a Friday afternoon. They usually find a new home fairly quickly so this wasn’t an issue at first: they should move on over the weekend – but these ladies were still there on Monday and so we were asked to relocate them.

The process is usually straight-forward. The bees need a home so we provide them with a temporary one and, after checking the queen is safely with them, deliver them to a local bee keeper. From there, they get checked for disease and then re-homed in a fully fitted out hive.

The next job of the day for us was a similar sized insect but a very different outcome: wasps building a nest in someone’s porch. While wasp nest relocation is possible in some situations, most times, there’s no option but to get rid of wasp as efficiently and safely as possible.