Me and Val did a cut out, oh, about a month ago. It was big and ran down below the foundation wall. We could only get 40% of the hive out. So we took 4 big frames of open Brood and nurse bees. Put them in a cardboard box and took them to Jordan's house.
I checked them Saturday. They made their own queen and are up and running. I love letting the bees do their thing.
Laura and Susan, with some serious treasure.
Summer and Kirk Anderson are my Sunday mentors at Los Feliz and that's where I first saw a bee hive. I got the bee fever and wanted a hive. The attached photos are from a Manhattan Beach cutout. This was my first cutout and I am very grateful to Susan R. and Laura B. for their help. It was a learning experience and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The hive was located in Manhattan Beach, California and it hung right over the driveway as you can see. The homeowner wanted the hive removed. We went to the location three days in order to complete the entire cutout process.
Day 1: We went to inspect the hive and assess on how we can remove the hive safely without too much disturbance to bees and environment since this is a residential area. We looked at the various branches attached to the hive and the type of equipment needed to lower it down. We needed a tall ladder to get to the hive, a shear to trim the branches, a trash can to store the hive overnight for the bees to return, a fence to secure the hive, and ropes to tie it. Sugar water to spray on the bees and a smoker to calm the bees down. Rubber bands to secure the combs to the frames.
Susan sprays some sugar water on the hive.
Day 2: Laura and Susan cut the branches, lowered the hive and secure it with a rope to a nearby tree. We let the hive hung over the trash bin overnight so all the bees can return to the hive before we remove it from the premise. It is important to note that the hive should not touch the bottom of the trash bin, otherwise, the wax combs would be damaged. Laura and Susan also brought a bamboo fence to surround the trash can with the hive overnight, this is to keep out curious eyes and hands.
Uri and Laura.
I just completed my first independent bee rescue on Monday. I should start by saying that I attended my first Backwards Beekeepers meeting about a year ago and have been keeping bees for almost a year now, and helped Roberta with a bee rescue in Long Beach last summer. So, it's been a lot of learning but I finally felt ready to do it on my own.
This particular colony had taken up residence under a Tuff Shed in Laura’s Costa Mesa backyard.
Laura’s yard was a wonderful place to work. She is a teacher at a Waldorf school and the yard reflected that. There was an array of fruit trees, an organic garden, and a tree house (Laura said her fruit production had increased dramatically since the bees took up residence). Also, she makes hand-crafted beeswax candles and she gave me one in appreciation for rescuing her bees! Thank you Laura.
The bees had to be removed because one of Laura’s sons got stung and found out he was very allergic. I was happy that she decided to have her bees rescued instead of destroyed.
The bees had dug an entrance through the dirt under the metal base of the shed. The only way to relocate them was to cut out part of the floor inside the shed and remove the bees from there.
I smoked the bees a bit while preparing my equipment. I then sawed a rectangle through the 1-inch wood flooring and removed that panel which had much comb (and bees!) hanging from it. They were quite a friendly colony and didn’t give any problems whatsoever.
Brad had been given a deep box of bees and comb last year but they absconded after the huge windstorm we had on December 1st. He decided it was time to get in on the action and get his next hive himself!
We laid everything out so we could see what we had and how his old comb looked. We had tons of space; there was practically nobody in the parking lot of Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook State Park. His kids had painted his hive boxes for him.
The meter box had about 8 very nice, flat combs in it, that detached intact. Super easy! Lots of brood and honey, too. We even found some eggs.
But did they want to leave that meter box? No they did not.
I worked this weekend with David, a senior at Whittier High School. He contacted me and needed some hours for his beekeeping fieldwork as soon as possible. I put out a call to the group and within an hour Summer and Susan both said that he could take a look at their hives. Susan already had another high school student coming over too, and Summer was hosting a mentoring session herself. Thank you ladies.
We also happened to get calls on the LA Rescue Hotline about two feral hives: a tree hive in Long Beach and a fence hive in Hacienda Heights—so we were set with something to do.
The tree hive was spotted by a woman out walking—it was in the parkway with the bees' path right across the sidewalk. We could easily spot the bees coming from an opening on the side of the tree but it looked hard to set up for a trap out.
Luckily, there was a hole in the tree where a branch had died and was removed. Someone had put a plastic bag in the hole and we removed it to find a window right into the hive. It was great!
Warren had contacted us about some north Long Beach bees in need of rescue. Josie had watched a swarm descend upon her lemon tree about 4 months prior and that was about the time she noticed bees flying around in her carport. She has a pretty strong allergy to honey—one day too many of putting honey in her tea gives her a pretty nasty rash—so it was important to remove the bees.
Carport wall before demolition...
Once Roberta and I arrived, it was clear that it would be easier to access the hive from next-door neighbor Monica’s backyard than from Josie’s storage-filled carport. Fortunately we had permission from them both to tear down whatever was necessary to get to the bees.
We took turns pulling down fence boards then took a crowbar to the back wall of the old carport. There they were: lots of bees, living on what seemed to me to be some pretty old comb. I doubt the hive arrived 4 months prior. I’m guessing what Josie saw was a swarm leaving, not arriving.
...and after.
Roberta had thought we would finish in an hour but unfortunately I can rarely keep up with her (who can?), so it took 2 hours. By the time we finished scraping off as much wax as we could, ants had already started moving in to clean up the remaining honey.
I did mention to Josie that since she loves her honey, she should start buying untreated raw honey from a local beekeeper; that the pollen in it might get her over her allergy.
—Barbara
The birdhouse bees on a happier, hotter day.
Doug and Cheryl gave us a call for help. Some bees moved into a bird house in their Baldwin Hills back yard over the summer. The strong Santa Ana winds, combined with the weight of the bee hive, caused the support beam to break in half and the bird house landed on the ground.
We went and collected the bird house and moved the hive into new digs in Santa Monica. The bees appear to be very happy in their new home!
—Yvonne
Ed faces the beehive.
It was one of those hives you wish you could just leave alone—comb woven so beautifully through the branches of the tree, its length impressive given its position out at the end of some very tiny branches. It looked impossibly heavy. Somehow it had survived the Santa Ana winds of the night before. I worried that evening that our rescue the next morning at dawn might come too late but when Craig and I arrived at 6:30 a.m. it was still firmly attached, covered in bees and was providing breakfast for a hummingbird. I wish we had gotten a picture of that.
Ed from Long Beach Department of Parks and Recreation had contacted Roberta to see if we could help out with this hive. The City has been very open to the idea of relocating rather than exterminating hives in the city’s parks so we really wanted this to go well. It could only be done on a weekday, so Roberta would not be available. I would need some help. I put out the call for some muscle and Rich, who has helped out before, said he was available and needed bees to bolster his weaker hive. We were set...or so we thought.
The night before the scheduled rescue, Rich injured his back and was not going to be able to lift or bend. There went the muscle. Rich brought his wife Sheleana and I brought Craig, who had helped me with pickups a time or two. Unfortunately we only had one extra veil borrowed from Roberta, so Craig was relegated to taking videos from a distance and being chased around the park by guard bees. He did both very well!
Ed had brought a one-person bucket truck which he was required to operate himself for liability reasons, so with no rescue experience he had to smoke, prune, vacuum, cut comb and bring it all down to Rich and me; we framed it and emptied the bee-filled vacuum into Rich’s boxes.
The top third of the hive had been drawn all through the little branches and had to be brought down as one piece. We estimated its weight at between 15 and 20 pounds. It was absolutely beautiful.
One interesting aspect was that several iridescent green fig beetles had been entrapped and looked like jewels below the surface. Rather than create a huge mess trying to remove the honeycomb from the mass we left it intact. Rich added a third box to enclose it so the bees could deal with it as they saw fit this winter.
It was a smooth team effort with no mishaps and amazingly for Craig, no stings. I’m sure Ed will ask for BBK help again.
—Barbara
Jim and Josh at work.
My friend in Santa Monica decided that he wanted to take advantage of the legalization of bees and add a hive to his yard. He bought all of the hive gear and then I got a call from him that he found some bees he wanted to rescue.
The suspected location.
What they found underneath.
Andrew and I did a cut-out together of another squirrel box, this time for his friends Fleur and Dins in Echo Park. The squirrel box was retrieved from Thousand Oaks a few days earlier.
It was a pretty tricky move because it was overflowing with bees and it was terribly high. Nonetheless it made it back to LA and we put it on Fleur and Dins’ rooftop.
Andrew and Fleur.
This is a great place for bees. It’s up on a hillside and has a spectacular view of downtown LA. It also made for a great nighttime urban beekeeping adventure after work.
The bees had been on the mean side so to minimize the craziness with the cut-out, we vacuumed them up. They were very nice bees this time around and didn’t seem to mind where they were going. They were calm enough that Fleur and Dins stayed and watched. It didn’t take long to get them in their new hive.
Unfortunately, in a few days, the bees were robbed and most of them didn’t survive the attack. They were probably just too nice. Well, Fleur was heartbroken so Andrew immediately called for another cutout. He joined the crew for a few cutouts at the zoo and hopefully he has more bees for her.
—roberta
Joe A. was excited to participate in his first cut-out so that he could get his first bee hive going in his yard. Susan R. came too, to help with the cut out just to get more experience and to help save more bees.
These bees had lived in a ceiling or attic space in a house in the Palisades for many years. The owners were doing a total renovation so they decided it was time for the bees to go. Dorothy C. did the logistics on getting all the permissions and helpers together! Thank you Dorothy!
Below is the owner's contractor, Gary, who borrowed a bee suit so that he could make the cut in the drywall himself and get a taste of bee fever! Here are the first trial holes... hmmm, we thought they were in there! It took a minute to find them.
Once we found the right spot we cut a nice big rectangle out of the drywall so we could get our tools in there to cut the comb down.
I like a pancake spatula because it has an angle. Putty knives are good too, once you get it started.
The hive was old but not that big. It went across two 16" bays of rafter beams. We rubber banded 2 full medium boxes of frames together for Joe, and I put 3 deep frames, including some with open brood, into a cardboard nuc box for the stragglers. There were a lot of stragglers.
Joe cut a lot of the comb down himself. Susan and I took most of the honey, and the contractor's workers got some too!
Here are Joe and Susan. We made a great team and enjoyed our morning's work. I will go back and pick up the straggler box
in a few days or a week.
—Ruth
Jennifer, Maddy and Izzy beneath their tree hive.This rescue could not have been sweeter (well, unless there had been honey). One nice mom, two live wire little girls bubbling over with questions, and a sweet little tree hive all made for a pleasant after-dark rescue event in Long Beach.
I had checked on Jennifer's bee situation a couple weeks ago—I had hoped it would just be a swarm, since she had just noticed it. But it turned out that the bees were settled in and were making comb.
When Roberta and I returned, we found the same little hive, now with one more comb than it had three weeks prior. It required some tricky pruning on Roberta's part, since combs were built through several tiny branches as well as the small main branch. She managed to free it and clear a path down.
My job was to hold the ladder still for her and not let go even if a blob of angry bees fell off the branch directly above and landed on me—a distinct possibility. Since my first bee rescue was the BBQ bees from hell bouncing off my veil and entire body, I figured I could handle a bee bomb on my head. Fortunately, I didn't have to test this theory.
This little hive was really a beauty and the bees were not at all defensive. Roberta was able to invite the girls back out to see it since the bees were so calm. Izzy and Maddy were snapping pictures with their own cameras and so excited that one question was tumbling into the next.
We put the hive, branch and all, into a cardboard box. The hive had so little growth in those three weeks that we suspect it might be queen-less, so Roberta has not quite decided where it will end up. Perhaps it will be added to another hive; perhaps she’ll wait and see how it does on its own.
Roberta and I answered each and every bee question the girls could think of while we were cleaning up, while we were packing the car, while we were strapping the ladder on top of the car, well, you get the idea. I’m sure they will still be talking about their big bee adventure for days. Who knows … maybe they will join a future generation of beekeepers. ☺
—Barbara
Ryan and his unwanted guests.
Saturday morning early (7 a.m. on a Saturday is early to me), Roberta picked me up and we headed for Ryan's garage bee hive in Long Beach. This was my second beeventure since becoming totally obsessed with all things apian. Little did I know this would be my first “hands-on” bee experience.
Ryan's dog checks out the intruders.
It appeared that the bees were limited to a small area behind a loose fascia board and had not had time to get much farther. After puffing a bit of smoke into the hive, Roberta settled down to showing me how to put together nuc frames.
A few minutes after another poof of smoke on the bees she artfully removed the loose board exposing a lovely one-month-old hive. First she demonstrated how to cut all the sides of the combs away from their attachments, removing a couple of pieces and shaking the bees off into the box. Then she showed me how to lay the comb into the frames and put frame into the nuc box. Lastly she said, in her sweet voice,… "OK Barbara, your turn”."
Ackkkk, I thought, I’'m going up that ladder and cutting comb out of a bee hive? So...up I went on the extremely rickety ladder (note duct tape holding it together in the video) into the cloud of bees.
OK, so they were extremely sweet bees, just feeling a bit disrupted. I managed to cut bee-covered comb off without destroying it, or falling off the ladder, or getting stung on the nose when my veil momentarily fell against my face. Success!
I had an absolutely wonderful time. Someone is getting some really nice bees, and as a final touch Roberta got to see her first-ever woodpecker on the way back to the car. I could get used to this.
—Barbara
Urban Bee Rescue from Andrew Monbouquette on Vimeo.
Last night Rob and I went to check out a tangerine tree hive in Culver City. The hive was a substantial size, described as two basketballs, and the estimate was pretty close—big for a tree hive. It was also pretty high up, about 10 feet.
I shot a few pictures and was trying to figure out when to remove it. Rob just said he would do it that day. He's got a bad case of bee fever! Well, how could I say no?
I called Yvonne who came to lend a hand and Rob started cutting branches away. That took at least an hour and we removed several 8-foot branches to create a path for the hive to some down. We smoked the hive, but the bees were still a little mad about it all.
Since it was night, we could get just about all the bees. By some miracle Rob was able to carry the huge branch down and then Yvonne held it while we trimmed branches to make it fit into the cardboard box. It was a team effort, but Rob did all the hard work.
Rob and Yvonne.
Cutting the hive apart to put it in a box is going to be pretty hard because there are branches stuck all throughout the comb. It's really beautiful. I wish it could have stayed up in the branches, but it was spectacular to see up close.
—roberta
I looked at the bees this morning, and the ants had already found the box. I decided to go ahead and do the cut out this morning. It could not have gone better. The bees were totally honey drunk, as they had gulped virtually every drop of honey. The hive was almost entirely brood, with very little drone comb.
Rather than try another top bar, I tied the comb into some frames for my large super. Total piece of cake comparatively. The problem though is I only had 5 frames. I ordered a bunch but they are still somewhere between here and Brushy Mountain; LA Honey Supply Co. didn't have frames after I drove all the way out there (seriously…?).
This is so much fun Roberta. You said it…I got one heck of a case of bee fever. Maybe I'm under the control of queen pheromones ;)
I'm not sure where these bees are going right now, but I'm sure to find a nice home. In the meantime, they can call my place home.
Thanks again Roberta, you are seriously the best. Total pleasure working with you.
Cheers,
Rob
Squirrel box (containing bees) sitting on hive box (empty).Earlier in the week I dropped off a squirrel box full of bees (from Elaine in Torrance) at Chris' place. We put the squirrel box on top of the hive box so that the bees could orientate to their new location.
After a few days Ceebs and I went over to do the quick evening cutout. We removed the top of the box and off came the tops of the combs along with it. There were a few combs and lots of bees.
Ceebs and Chris.We took out one comb at a time, shook the bees into the hive...
...and then put them into the frames. Easy.
The hard part was separating the bees from the squirrel bedding and nuts. We dumped everything from box onto a piece of cardboard and then let them walk right in. It took a little bit of coaxing but they figured it out.
These bees are going to love living up in the hills near Lincoln Heights.
Thanks also to Marcia of Coast and Canyon Rehabilitation and the squirrel box hosts for helping us save the bees. It takes a lot of planning to coordinate but it's worth it.
—roberta
Steve, loaded for bees.