Bigger Than a roberta

Kirkobeeo declared this comb at the LA Zoo was bigger than Roberta thereby creating a new measurement in the world of beekeeping and honey bees.

The young woman in the middle is Roberta.  She is the Backwards Beekeeper's human dynamo.  She does more cut-outs, swarm captures than anyone.  Seeing her schedule makes me tired.  Vertically challenged she shows no fear when it comes to bees, she towers over all of us..  She is an inspiration to us all. and a robera is much more important than a Smoot at MIT (Google Smoot MIT if you don't know.)

The LA Bee Rescue Hot Line got a call about some bees in a Medical Building in San Gabriel They were entering via this electric conduit on the roof of the building.

The bees were behind this drywall and had worked their way down ithrough some lighting fixtures to offices in the building. They had to be removed or exterminated.

BBK'er Randy and Joseph took up the job.  The first cut showed the bees were between the next two beams.  After some vanilla/sugar water spray, Randy starts to use his bee vac.  This was a perfect job for a bee vac.

Building Manager Kyle tries his hand with Randy's Bee Vac

And here the bees  are, filling the entire space between the studs and honey dripping everywhere.

This comb was loaded with honey and a gazilion bees but they were not hard to work with once they got the sugar/vanilla water.

The length of the comb is exposed and it is definitely more than one Roberta.  The comb was at least five feet in length and maybe more.  No one took time to measure it.

Randy using his bee vac as Joseph offers advice.

Joseph getting his turn with the vac

Joseph standing on his tip toes can barely reach the top of the comb.

Comb all removed.  It filled this entire space from stud to stud with only bee space not used.

From the header to almost the bottom was comb and most was full of honey or brood.   This hive must have been here for years.

 

We took four containers of honey comb.  Joseph had two supers with frames full of brood comb plus some honey and pollen,

The hive was left on the roof for the day so the bees can get oriented to the new home.  The hole by the electric conduit was sealed and blocked with expansion foam.

 Another fine job pulled off by Backwards Beekeepers Rescue Hot Line.

What's Buggin' Me

This is my 1960 Kenskill trailer that I take to dog shows, vintage trailer rallies and sometimes just fun trips.  It lives in my back yard when it is not on the road. 

I have a satellite antenna I use when traveling but when the trailer is parked at home I just hook up to this one on the house.  When I switched to HD and the giant screen they installed a new antenna and left this one.  It is very handy.  I was in the trailer working on a window today and decided to turn on the TV.  It showed no connection which was odd.  I double checked all the connections and still no luck.  Then I started swapping out pieces of the cable, eventually getting almost a direct line between the receiver and the dish. The was still no connection.

This is what I see when I check the signal strength.  If it is good there will be numbers in all of the lines.  When there is a weak connection there will be zeros in every other row. I kept getting random numbers in no definite pattern, it was very confusing.   Just to be sure I again swapped cables and connections.    Using satellite finder I knew the dish was aimed right but then that started giving odd results.  What the??

I looked up at the antenna on the house and noticed the plastic piece on the end of the signal receiver was cracked and broken.  That did not seem to be the problem but with no other options showing up I decided to change that with the one off my travel antenna.  That finally solved the problem but not for any reason that had occurred to me.

Someone had moved into the antenna receiver.  Yes, that is wasp on her nest.  She never moved when I took this piece down.  That is a good thing, I have memories of grabbing a nest of wasps by accident when I was very small.   My hand still hurts when I think of that. Some things you never forget and never do again.  I noticed all the wasp cells were empty.  Had the TV signal radiated her enough to make her sterile?   I hope I have not started s super race of wasps in The Dale.

Enough of the pests of the world and back to the good bugs in the next post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sacred Bee Project

The San Gabriel Mission has a bee problem and placed a call to the Backwards Beekeepers Bee Rescue Hot Line.  I went out yesterday to check it out.

This side of the Mission has the cemetery for many of the clergy who served here from the beginning.

Access is limited to a ladder and climbing 12 feet up to the chamber that used to service the belfry, fallen long ago after many earthquakes.   That is Chuck from the Mission on the ladder, not me.

The bees are one side of the space now.

It looks like there was a bee hive on the other side of the space at one time

After checking out the job I hope to organize a capture of the bees in a couple of weeks.  I need to find Beeks who do not mind ladders and who can fit into the space where the bees are.  I fail on both counts.  I am too tall to fit comfortably and going up ladders is not my forte.  Stings are not a problem for me but ladders are. 

 After checking out the bee site, Chuck of San Gabriel Mission took me on a tour of the gardens and spaces to look for a good site for a bee hive.  He would prefer they stay at the Mission, but not in the Mission.  He considers the Mission a sanctuary, even for bees,  We have located a couple areas where a bee hive is not likely to come into contact with the many tourists that come to the Mission on a daily basis.

EDIT:  Since i live a long way from the Mission, they will be looking for a volunteer to be the Official (maybe sanctified) Beekeeper of Mission San Gabriel Archangel if the hive is established there.  Someone living in the area will do and it can be new beek.  Just think of the blessings you will get and you can keep the Holy Honey too.

Watch this space for an update on the Bees In The Belfry.  Anyone interested in helping with this project can contact me through this site or using the Backwards Beekeepers Mentors list
Bear in mind that access will be 12 feet up a ladder and the actual working space is limited,
The target date for now is the first Saturday of August.

Madronna Marsh Bees

 Backwards Beekeepers Ed and Randy take on a rescue that was reported to have been there a week.  Maybe, this is a lot of comb for a hive that is not huge in bee numbers.  I suspect they were just noticed a week ago and had been there longer.

Kelly from Madronna Marsh Nature Preserve contacted the Backwards Beekeepers Bee Rescue Hot Line. This an old sump area that had been undeveloped for years.  It gradually returned to its original life as an attractive place for wildlife to gather.  The citizens of Torrance decided to keep it that way instead of letting developers fill the space with little boxes of ticky tacky or big boxes of more.

They had bees in a water control unit next to a garden path.  Ed Garcia and Randy took the call and set up a rescue date. I got an invitation to take a few pictures and add a pair of hands when needed.

The first step was a little smoke.  These were very calm and nice bees, the smoke may not have been needed but better safe than sorry when it comes to bees.

Most of this type of in-ground units do not have a lot of comb. This one had five nice comb sections.  Four stuck to the lid and one stayed in the unit.  All of the comb was removed.  It contained some very nice honey (and tasty honey and pollen but now that I think about it I do not recall there being any brood.  Here's hoping we did not hurt the queen, we never spotted her but the bees acted like she was in place in the nuc when we were done.

The lid was placed over an empty nuc with the combs hanging inside and the last piece of comb was added also.  This gave something for the bees to concentrate on.  Before cutting off each piece of comb, Randy and Ed thumped the lid to make the bees fall into the nuc and get out of the way of the knife Ed used..

Some of the comb was big enough to make two pieces to put into each frame.  Ed and Randy tried to keep the comb pieces oriented the way they had been on the lid.

This was a small job so each piece of comb could be removed and put into a frame before moving on the next comb. For a cut out this was a pleasant little job with little mess and no property destruction.

 

Rubber bands worked to hold most of the comb in place on the frame but cotton string was used for a couple of the shorter pieces.( Use only cotton string, never nylon, it is too hard for the bees to deal with.) Once the comb has been secured to the frames by the bees they will cut the string and rubber bands and pull them out of the hive.

The bees seemed to adapt to their new home quickly.  There was comb in five frames all lined up the way they had been in the original hive. 

 

 

 

After the comb was in the frames Ed moved the nuc near the control unit where they had originally been. At first there were only a few bees around the opening.

Randy brushed the bees that remained in the control unit and encouraged them to check out the new digs.

 

The bees started to move up to the nuc.  They closed the nuc lid and left the nuc on site for the rest of the day.  Ed went by and picked it up later and offered the bees for adoption on the Bee Rescue Hot Line.

All done, that's a wrap.  

Pool House Bees

This is the target it is in the ceiling of the bathroom of a long abandoned pool house in Palos Verdes.  The contractor, John, found Ed Garcia.  John needed the bees removed so the pool house could be demolished. Ed asked to use the Mighty Bee Vac and I agreed if I could come along.  He also recruited Ty who is hopeful beekeeper.  We needed every one for this job. .

 

In the videos you can see Ty reaching up into the ceiling cavity to vacuum off the bees and then cut down the comb.  At this point Ed and John were cutting the comb and putting it into frames.

This was the hive before we started.  As big as this is, there was one 2-3 times as big in the site previously.  You could see the marks where the comb had been removed.  Unfortunately the exterminator did not seal the site or do anything to discourage bees and they came back.

This is the comb that is put into frames by Ed and John in the videos.

Ed and John with comb in place.  I expected two supers of comb but once we removed most of the honey, 20-30#, we had one super and two frames.  We tossed the extra frames and kept the full super.  This took longer than expected, about 3 hours, but Ed and Ty ended up with a nice supply of honey.  John has a site he can work in once he smokes bombs it and an sprays the comb area with some ammonia.

The bees are at Ed's for now.  When I installed them and removed the Bee Vac top and bottom they were a tad agitated.  You would be upset too if you were sucked down a vacuum tube.  They should settle down in time but this was a very big amount of bees.  One day Ed will be moving them to a new home in the San Fernando Valley.

A full days work and a good job by everyone.

The Bees At The Times

The Bee Rescue Hot Line received several calls about bees on a balcony at the LA Times building.  This was outside the old Executive Offices level, now vacant except for the odd movie, commercial shoot.  There was another shoot scheduled for this weekend and they were anxious to have the bees removed ahead of time otherwise the exterminators were coming.  Kudos to the Times staff for being persistent and kept calling until we showed up. 

The bees were in a small kumquat bush, on the outside overlooking downtown LA.  The swam turned out to be a hive.  It had been noticed only a couple weeks ago but there was a lot of comb under the hive that must have been torn off in high winds, there was nothing up here that could have caused that damage.  Sorry, there are no pictures of the hive before we went to work.  I brought my camera but not the battery.  The hive was well established among the branches.  The only way to get it was spray them with sugar water, add a bit of smoke and start clipping branches and leaves.  Amy Seidenwurm gave me a hand getting the job done.  There was not enough space for two people to work.  As the comb was cleared of foliage, I clipped the main branches and dropped them into the nuc.  The frames had been removed from the nuc.  Once all the cob was inside, I gradually removed the comb and Amy put it into the frames which were placed back into the nuc.  We saved all the big bits with some brood and a little honey.  The odd thing was the amount of swarm cells, five or six, that we found and removed. 

When all the comb was inside I put the lid partially on the nuc and removed the plug so the bees had plenty of access.  We left it there over night and when it got darker and the bees were inside one of the valiant maintenance men went out, put the lid full in place and plugged the nuc entry.

When we arrived early in the morning, Roxanne brought a laundry bag to cover the nuc.  Great idea, it works better than the sheets I used in the past. 

The bees over looking Los Angeles.  Their new home would be in the San Fernando Valley with quite a different view but lots and lots of plants and flowers to work.

The Bees at Disney Hall.  This was a very easy pickup and the staff and the LA Times was great.  They could have easily killed the bees and no one would have noticed.   Special mention should be made of Jim Rasmussen who would not give and kept calling us. Thanks to Amy for her help and Roxanne for providing a home for the bees.  Backwards Beekeepers Bee Rescue Hot Line Forever!!

This is an unedited piece with Amy using my Flip for the first time.  It takes so long to upload that I did not try to edit the piece.  It is seven minutes long and not thrilling but you get all the cuts.  LOL  This is almost live but not quite. It is The Times and The Bees raw unedited.  Don't expect music or an announcer voice.    This took eight hours to upload, be grateful it is here at all.  LOL