I got a call while I'm loading my truck and about to be on the way to check on a trap-out I set up a while back and to pick up another one that was ready to bring home. The call is from a construction general contractor asking if I do bee removal. I say yeah I help when and where I can, what type of situation do you have?
He says they are clearing some land right next to a subdivision and just bull dozed down a tree with a hive and now they need someone to do something with the bees. My initial response was . . . is anyone hurt and where are the bees now?
He let me know that the tree was close to some houses and that no people were hurt, but a couple of dogs got hit pretty hard by the bees and were still down. His main concern was the neighborhood, so using enclosed dozers, they pushed the "bee tree" with a bunch of other trees and brush away from the back of the houses and into a pile about 200 yards from the privacy fences of the homes that border the property.
It just so happened that the trap-out job I was going to check on was within a few miles of these guys, so I offered to stop by and have a look. On the way, all hell broke lose with the weather around here. It slowed traffic to a crawl on my way through down town San Antonio, causing an hour trip to take closer to two hours. The land they were clearing got about an inch of rain and was a mud pit when I arrived.
When I got there a safety officer from the company met me and escorted me around to the house with the two down dogs. One was worse than the other. Both large black lab types and both laid out on a garage floor. The owners, standing around in shock and scared of course, were obviously upset and fearing for the lives of their pets.
I started removing several stingers from around the eyes, ears and mouth of the closest dog and I could tell right away that she was pretty out of it. Even though I was pretty late on the scene, I figured it wouldn't hurt to remove the stingers and it seemed to comfort the owner some. I offered some Benadryl, but he said they'd been talking with their vet and had already given both dogs a dose.
This dog didn't look too good. Her eyes were not stable and she wasn't moving a muscle. The other one got up and walked around a bit, so I checked him and he seemed to at least be aware of his surrounds.
This was a first for me, (dogs attached) so I wasn't sure what else I could do or offer other than to go see about the bees. I did put a little MelaGel on the stung areas of the first dog that I checked. MelaGel is sting pain reliever I was given by my aunt that was married to my late uncle that was a beek for many years. It's a topical balm that contains Natural Melaleuca Oil and helps a good deal with stings.
(any advice anyone wants to offer here would be helpful for us all I'm sure)
So I go out behind the houses to find a few small saplings remaining where they indicated the "bee tree" was before they dozed it down. A few bees were starting to cluster on one of them and another few dozen bees were basically searching for home and going up and down a section of the privacy fence near the small tree where the others were gathering.
A couple hundred yards from there, out in the middle of the cleared field, is a good size brush pile. What looked like 6 or 8 mid size trees, mostly young live oaks and a mesquite or two, as well as some scrub brush that was about 30 feet long and 20 feet across and bunched up really tight. That made it difficult for me to get in among the larger limbs to try to locate a hive of any sort.
There were a few layers of comb laying around, over on one edge of the brush pile, and a piece or two hanging on a limb above them. Plenty of bees were covering the comb on the ground robbing the honey and there was one good size ribbon with a fair amount of salvageable brood. All in all there were about 6 pieces of comb, the longest about 14 – 16 inches by 3 – 4 inches wide, so I'm guessing it was a fairly small limb they were hived up in. Of course that could have come from only a small section and there may be plenty more buried up in the middle somewhere? The dozer drive was already gone, so there was no one on location that really knew anything more about anything else.
I brought along a cardboard 5 frame nuc, but I didn't have a swarm lure with me, so I decided to frame up as much of the brood as I could salvage and see if that would be enough to draw the bees into. The bees over by the houses were mostly clustered about head high on a small live oak right around a fork. I figured I got lucky there and took advantage of the fork to place the nuc and tied it off there. There were bees going in to it before I finished tying it to the tree. So that was promising.
These construction guys need to get back to their clearing business asap, but there's rain in our forecast again tomorrow. I'm hoping that will allow the bees enough time to regroup and hopefully with any luck, they may move into the nuc trap I left for them.
Of course I have no idea what happened to the original hollow the hive was in or if there is even any thing left of it or not. I looked as good as I could in the brush pile (without cutting my way into it) but since I couldn't locate a stream of bees going into it anywhere and it was starting to rain again a little, I decided it wasn't worth investigating at the moment.
I left the nuc there and depending on the weather and maybe any advice received here, I may go back out there tomorrow, or may wait until Friday. The rain chances are less then and it may give the bees more time to regroup.
I'll take my generator and bee vac when I go, so in case I find them clustered somewhere else, I can at least load up what I can find.
I know it's a tough thing to give advice about without seeing things first hand and also without knowing what I'll find when I return, but any pointers would be helpful and most appreciated.
Should I even worry about getting into the middle of the brush pile to attempt to locate what may or may not be left of the original hive? They intend to push the entire pile further across the property in a couple of days, so I don't have much time to act on that . . . if at all and if needed?
Or should I just go check the nuc trap in a couple of days and hope for the best? Hopefully the dogs are okay and maybe I'll be able to rescue a few thousand bees before it's over.
That sounds tough. I hope it all works out for you.
I had a chance to help a friend cut out a feral hive from a pile of logs and brush, similar to what you're describing. The biggest difference though, was that we had relatively easy access to that particular log. It was visible from a country lane. We just cut out a 7 foot section of the log with a chain saw, loaded it with a tractor, and moved it to his apiary to trap it out in the spring.
You've got a tough nut to crack there. IMO, if you get a dry period of time to locate the original hole, you might stand a chance of cutting it out. If not, get what bees you can in the nuc and be done with it.
Sad to hear of those dogs. Hope they both recover.
Most colonies in down tress I have encountered, and that ain't been many. they have abandoned and robbed out in a couple days if the tree is split open. I would imagine the dozer pushing probably messed it up pretty bad.
I just got a call from the safety officer on the job site and he reported that the home owners had to put both dogs down - per their vet's recommendation. The vet informed then there was too much poison in their systems and their kidneys were going to start to shutting down.
That's pretty sad news and a bit of a surprise to me. I was really hopeful they would be okay, but evidently they received more stings than they could handle.
As far as the bees . . . they reported that as of this morning, a good deal of bees were on top and on the sides of the nuc box, so that is some better news. They want me to come get them asap so they can get back to work. I suggested giving the bees a couple of days to regroup and find the nuc box, but they want me to come back out today. I'm not sure if another day will make any difference, so as long as another storm don't roll in, will another day help or . . . not so much?
I would pick them up at dark today/tonight.
Thanks Iddee,
I'll head back out there this evening and maybe get there in time to snap a few pics of the scene to share here before I load the box up. I'll access the situation over at the brush pile and condider leaving the box there another 24 hours if I see enough bees that would justify doing so and another 2 hour round trip. (not likely, but we'll see)
Thanks for the feedback,
GD
Poor dogs. That really saddens me. :(
Hate it about the dogs and surprised they would have been still enough for that many stings. How close were the dogs to the incident? Were the dogs fenced or chained and could not get away. Sad but good thing nothing but the dogs were around or the outcome may have been worse or say more publicized.The incident don't help the cause much :(
Yeah this really sucks about the dogs. Me and my wife are both pretty taken by the whole thing and wish there was something we could do.
As far as the dogs being chained, I don't think that was the case. There's a wooden privacy fence between the area where the tree was and the yard where the dogs were. I'm not sure exactly since no one wanted to escort me to that part of the property, but the tree that the bees were gathering (where I placed the nuc) was fairly close to the fence, about 25 feet or so I'd say.
No one told me any details about how the even actually proceeded, other than that the dogs were barking and got attacked. So my guess is that the dogs were barking at the dozer being so close to their property. I'm sure the addition of the snapping limbs and branches added to their reason for barking and when the bees became upset, of course the dogs were close and loud enough to draw their attention.
Bummer for all parties concerned for sure. :(
Are you sure you want those bees? I know you got a lot invested in it but they may not be worth the aggressiveness.
Quote from: GSF on September 18, 2014, 07:20:48 PM
Are you sure you want those bees? I know you got a lot invested in it but they may not be worth the aggressiveness.
I thought about that too, but wasn't sure what else I'd do with them and since they were not overly aggressive with me when I arrived in the scene, I thought I'd see how they acted after having a day to settle back down.
I arrived back at the site just before sunset the following day and was able to get a few pics (see link below) and was also able to find what was left of the original hive. As it turns out, they were in the hollow if a good size mesquite tree with a 12" - 14" trunk. There was a good double handfull of bees gathered on what was left of a section of the truck that had been split by the dozer.
Over at the nuc, things were pretty calm. Several bees in the air and one or two came to check me out, but mostly they moved on when I kept my distance. After putting on my bee suit and getting right nest to the box, a few were more interested, but not overly aggressive. There was a couple hundred bees gathered on and around the nuc, so I decided to get my bee vac out and get set up before dark.
This was the first time I've needed a generator to run my vac since upgrading to the larger motor and since the spec plate on the side of the motor does not provide the wattage data, I just assumed I'd be okay with the set-up I brought along.
Note to self - bring along the smaller 2.5 hp shop vac or a larger generator when working on remote locations. My little quiet 1,000 watt Honda was not enough to push the 6.5 hp vac motor. arrrggg.
Looking at the entrance of the box, it appeared full and the bees on the outside were not interested in pushing their way inside, even with a little smoke to get them moving around. So I ended up taking the box down and removing the lid, then setting it inside a large plastic storage bin I use for my vac motor and hoses.
The nuc I had set out was one of the cardboard temp boxes with the space between the opening and the frames. So the nuc wasn't full, but that little entrance space was jammed packed with bees, so the others weren't eager to push their way inside. Instead they wanted to hang out on the outside and the smoke only made them want to spread out onto the tree. So I backed off that idea and rethought the best way to proceed – with what I had on hand to work with.
Once I put the nuc in the storage bin it was getting dark enough for them to resist the urge to fly on their own. The ones covering the box stayed on the box, for the most part, and the ones on the tree did the same. I carry a little whisk broom and dust pan, so I swept a few into the bin that way and used a fluorescent drop light to lure the rest into the bin with. It took a little time and a bit of coaxing, by brushing them off of the tree with my bee brush, but with the drop light inside the bin shining on the white box it gave off a pretty good glow and worked pretty well overall.
After the bulk of the bees were in the bin, I loaded up and moved over to the brush pile hoping to get the ones I saw there earlier into the bin as well. The split log had a good cluster still on it, so I was able to pick it up and shake most of them into the storage bin. The rest I swept in with the bee brush.
Since none of these bees seemed aggressive at any point, I decided to bring them to the house and add them to another colony. I have a smaller hive that could use a little more foragers and figured it couldn't hurt to try. At least they'll have a chance this way.
Here's the photos taken the evening I picked them up . . . I wasn't able to get any pics the first day.
Day 2.
http://www.southsixsigns.com/TheBeePlace/Removal/HR021b.htm (http://www.southsixsigns.com/TheBeePlace/Removal/HR021b.htm)
All in all it seems to have worked out ok for you. Good job!
Probably all the drama had them worked up.
Thanks Hops.
Yeah, GSF, I think you're right. I guess I'd have a rather dramatic reaction too, if someone bulldozed down my house like that!
keep us informed
Please
sorry to here about the dogs
I think it was because the home fell down