IANA bee expert but they do look productive and therefore happy in their new home.
Great pix; thanks for sharing.
Oh, man, I bet mango honey is delishush.
Do you have a pool guy, or do you handle that maintenance yourself?
Either way, have you asked the landscape folks if they care?
If they shrug, I’d be inclined to leave 'em alone.
If only I can convince them to give me some!
I agree.
When I was a kid, the next door neighbor had a yard covered with dandelions, and when they were in bloom, the entire yard buzzed with bees. Hundreds and hundreds of honey bees, plus a lot of bumble bees. The neighborhood kids used to catch bees in glass jars for sport. We’d try to see how many we could get into an old gerbil cage, before there were so many that we couldn’t get any more in without some getting out.
No one was ever stung doing this.
I’ve also caught bees and released them one-by-one to find a wild nest. Again, lots of fingers close to bees, no one stung.
Honey bees aren’t very aggressive, and unless you attack the nest or step on one or something, they are unlikely to cause problems.
I expect a beekeeper could manage to steal some for you. You’ll have to wait until they’ve got stores built up, though; it’ll take them a while.
The bees vanished. They were last seen about a week and a half ago, a few days before a big rain storm. I was hoping they were hiding out, but they seem to be gone.
My bee keeper friend tells me
- They probably moved on
- It’s unlikely new bees will move into the hive
- Wax moths will clean up after them
- I don’t want any honey from the hive, in case pesticides were part of the story.
It was interesting while it lasted! Thanks, all, for the information and talk.
Makes me think of that famous Monty Python skit that goes roughly:
[Long and increasingly testy back and forth between shop clerk & customer …]
Customer (exasperated): Do you in fact actually have anycheesebees at all?
Clerk: Well, umm, urr, … No.
Huh I was expecting
Sorry – I was late to this thread, so my advice isn’t useful any more, but might be useful to someone with a similar problem.
If you like the bees and their beneficial use for pollinating your local crops, and you have some spot not far away that is suitable, you could ask the beekeeper to house the bees, then leave the hive at your special place. It should work, and the honey can be harvested periodically from a modern hive without harming the bees.
It’s difficult to harvest the honey from a wild swarm hanging from a tree branch. There is no practical way to get the comb down without killing all the bees, and it will be in irregular shapes, hard to extract the honey from it. Although you could cut the comb into chunks. Some people like the honey-on-comb to chew on, but it’s hard to store.
When I was a teenager, years ago, I decided to keep bees as a hobby. I lived in a fringe suburban area of single family homes, and although our home backed up to a forest, it was perhaps only a 1/4-acre lot in a row of similar houses. I began with a single hive (bees bought from Sears by mail!) and increased it to 5 over time. I never went out to capture swarms, but often put an empty hive right next to the active ones to encourage the bees to swarm to the new hive. Other times, I split the colony into two, giving the new one a new queen (which I could also order from Sears).
I had to get a honey extractor and an electrically heated large knife to slice off the capped comb. It worked! After extracting the honey, I returned the empty comb to the hives and the bees continued to fill it with honey.
I gave most of the product away to neighbors. I can’t say it was a profitable hobby, but it was fun and educational. And I only got stung a few dozen times.
As predicted, the physical hive is starting to collapse. I found this chunk on the ground yesterday.
Slightly zoomed in:
My beekeeper friend advised that the only thing it will do now is attract roaches and ants. He said I could either bury it, or double bag it and throw it out.
I’d bury it; or compost it. No reason to inflict it on the landfill while depriving your yard of the nutrients.
He thought that composting wouldn’t be a good idea, because it likely has too much protein in it. (In the form if dead larva.)
That would depend on what you mix it with. But burying it might be easier.