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Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/510169
18 City Trees exit the tree to go foraging and on their return cannot get back into the tree trunk. They will cluster around the wired entrance and eventually move into the trapping hive and care for the brood frame. Depending on the age and size of the colony, it should take a maximum of five days to extract the bees. Quite often, between the hours of 11am and 2pm the bees will fly around vigourously and often the queen is attracted to the outside by all this activity. When the bees are using the trapping hive actively, with little to no activity at the wire cone, wait for the evening when the bees are no longer flying and seal the trapping hive and take it a minimum of 2 miles (3.2 km) away from the trees' position, thus avoiding the bees returning to the tree. The wire cone is then removed and the entrance is permanently sealed. The question always asked is, what happens to the honey comb? The willow tree is difficult to break open to get to the honey comb, so it is left in the tree trunk and it will eventually be destroyed by wax moths. When bees have just moved in to a position for a day or two, they can either be smoked out or vacuumed out and placed in a trapping box. So if spotted early, the removal task is very easily achieved. —Vic Macdonald, Owner of Bees Incorporated (beesincorpo- rated.com), Kelowna, British Columbia This tree became a safe haven for four honeybee colonies that had been attacked by a black bear forag- ing for food. Their hives were totally destroyed, so all the bees fled and collected on the nearest tall tree to form this monster swarm. This is a highly unusual situ- ation, because there is always only one queen bee in a colony, with very few exceptions to this rule. Assuming four queens are present in this monster colony, these queens will eventually meet up with each other and have a royal battle, with only one queen surviving to take over. This required beekeeper intervention because the bees were homeless and without food. We divided the colony into four equal sizes, each approximately the size of two basketballs. We introduced them into new hives, each with twenty frames of honey. The introduction was done through the use of a queen excluder, thus enabling us to check if a queen was present. Fortunately, the queens were marked with a green dot (green was the international queen colour for 2014) on the thorax, which helped to spot the queen readily as well as knowing her age. Three queens were identified; the fourth most likely perished during the bear attack or had already been set upon by a fellow queen bee. So we introduced a new queen into the fourth colony of bees, thus making them all queen right. Under normal circumstances a colony leaving a hive will almost always gorge themselves on honey to help them start a new colony. This engorgement leads to a docile swarm of bees, hence any swarm of bees hanging on a branch of a tree will be docile and easy to handle. The swarm of bees will almost always seek a seclud- ed, dark cavity to build their new nest. The cluster on the tree branch is merely a temporary stopover and, weather permitting, their scout bees will have located a good nesting place and the whole colony will move off the same day, leaving behind a very small number of straggler bees. When it comes to removing bee colonies from unwant- ed positions, knowledge and experience are valuable assets. The willow tree is a favourite nesting site for bees because of the cavities present in the older trees. Our golden rule is to always remove the colony alive and not harm the bees during the process, irrespective of the position and length of time the colony has occupied the position. Careful observation for tell-tale signs will indicate how long the bees have been resident, as well as how much comb building has taken place, together with how many entrances the bees are using. A wire cone is placed over the main entrance and all other entrances are sealed permanently. A trapping hive with one frame of brood and three frames of drawn comb are placed as close to the wire cone exit as possible. The worker bees Monster bee swarm • Photo by Vic Macdonald