5/12/11

Just in time

Everyone loves a bee swarm.

We got a call to the Bee Rescue Hotline yesterday about a swarm on a forklift at a Glendale trucking company. When I called back, the manager told me that he'd already called an exterminator, but that I could try to get there before the killing began. "No guarantees," he said.



When I arrived, Jason the exterminator was filling out his paperwork but hadn't broken out the poison yet. The trucking company manager agreed to keep mum about the bees getting rescued instead of killed, since his landlord was paying for the job anyway.


Jason the exterminator.


I climbed atop the forklift and knocked the swarm into one of the wooden nuc boxes custom-made by LA Backwards Beekeeper David S. I got the queen in on the first try, and the rest of the bees started marching right in.



It was a good thing the swarm was easy to catch, because the manager was itchy as could be to get his forklift going again. "I need you to move it along," he kept calling to me. He didn't want Jason to drive away without killing all the straggler bees. (To Jason's credit, he was very interested in the swarm-catching process and lent a hand in holding the box when I knocked the bees into it.)


Kill kill kill!


I finally decided that I had caught most of the swarm, so I taped up the box and put it in my trunk. Then Jason moved in to kill him some bugs. I snapped a quick photo and took off.

—Russell