In my own house, no less. Last November a swarm had taken up residence in the eave above our dining room window, next to the back door. They survived the winter and came on like gang busters. These bees, by the way, are unrelated to my hive across the yard.
I’ve been putting off cutting them out because they haven’t been a bother and I really haven’t felt like tearing my own house apart. Normally that's the kind of thing we do for people who contact us asking for help. Anyway, I decided to cut them out Saturday with the help of three fellow beekeeper friends. I chose this weekend because I want them to have time to get established in a new hive before winter gets here.
Here are the bees after I cut away the first part of the soffit. It took me 30 minutes with a drill (pilot holes), a skill saw, and a crowbar just to get to this point – but if you look closely, you’ll notice there isn’t a single bee in the air. Without a doubt, the calmest colony I’ve ever seen.
This is after the cut-out and comb removal. I had to tear out more structure (rafters and fascia) to get at all their comb, which I put into a proper hive using special frames made just for cut-outs and removals. As was expected, they got much more aggressive after I started to remove babies and food. That said, they were still fairly calm. Never more than maybe 300 in the air, the rest staying with the comb as I placed it onto the new hive. I've done cut-outs before where there two or three times that many in the air.
This is the colony in their new home on Sunday. I put it about three feet from where they had been, on the roof, just above the torn out eave. Activity appears to be normal. I’ll build back the rafters, eaves, soffit, and fascia in a week or two. Some stragglers are still hanging around cleaning the last bits of honey from where the comb had been attached inside. That’s normal.
Six hours start to finish on Saturday and another two hours on Sunday gathering bunches of stragglers and putting them into the new hive. I sprayed them with sugar water and brushed them into a small box for the climb up the ladder. Final tally: 24 stings – a personal best. ;-)