An interesting month so far, I have left the bees alone as we are now back to the usual spring weather of howling wind and rain. I have made up some more wax frames and done some repairs on hive parts that needed fixing. I was about to relax and then I got a phone call from Charterhouse school in Godalming. Apparently the headmaster was having some work done on one of the old fireplaces at the school and when they lifted the floorboards they found this lot hiding underneath….
It seems some extra students had taken up residence. The school had already called a pest controller who had correctly identified them as honeybees and quite rightly did not want to spray them, so they were looking for a solution that allowed their fireplace to be renovated and for the bees to be saved. I packed some kit in the car and went over to have a look, and hopefully come up with a solution. Getting bees out of buildings can be difficult at the best of time and it mostly depends if you can get to them easily (which often you can’t). The bees had set themselves up between two joists in the space between the ground and first floor and were using a gap in the wall for access. After a quick inspection I removed some floorboards to see just how much comb they had built. (this gives me a good idea of how long they had been there and how big the colony was). As you can see from the photo the nice person who built the old floor had numbered the boards.
So I started to pull them up, 3, 4, 5, 6, hmmm seems to be quite a big colony, 7, 8, 9 and we eventually get to 12 floorboards removed before I get to the end of the comb and nest. (there was now half the floor missing from the room).
It took all morning to carefully cut out the old comb, collect the new comb onto frames and place them in a transport box and fill up the holes to prevent the bees re entering the floorspace and setting up home again. They are now house in a new hive down on the Apiary and are being checked for disease before becoming full members of the Heatherside Honey Club. The headmasters room is missing a floor, covered in honey and wax and looks a lot worse than it started. – I will leave that job to the maintenance team.
The amount of comb was quite outstanding, and they must have been there for at least 3-4 years, maybe more. The ladies had to be moved as the headmaster needs his fireplace sorted and they had not passed any of the entrance exams !! no free lessons I am afraid, and they are much better off in a hive with a bit of care, rather than an old school floor.
