Got a call this evening from a lady who was at work. Said her son was standing in front of a holly tree with a swarm of bees on it about 5' off the ground, in front of her house. Yeah, a new hive! I love swarm calls! Anyway, I drive over there and as I am rounding the coldesac I see bees, lots of bees hanging from this limb on a holly tree. Only problem is that I see a guy (the lawn guy), with a hose and sprayer attached, keeping his distance, but about to be up to no good, so I think. No he is just getting ready for round two. I get outta my truck and ask him if he sprayed the bees already and he has. I asked him why!! and preceded to give him a lashing. The majority of the bees about 5lbs worth went airborne but a decent bit were dying. I felt bad for yelling a little at the guy and he felt bad for spraying them, but after I explained to him how docile and harmless a swarm can be and after I gave him my business card he said he would call me from now on. This was a sad one all the way around.
Same thing happened to me got a call for a swarm . The guy that owned the house just got home with two cans of raid . They were too high up for me about 15 up in a bushy cedar tree . I talked him out of killing them and told them they would move on in a day or so .
Fishawk, the average non-beekeeping type in my experience doesn't want to wait for the bees to move on and there is always the posibility that a swarm could take up residency nearby, if not in fact in that person's house that had the swarm cluster.
That's the first question I ask. "did you spray them" The next is "are you going to spray them".
The good thing about all of the CCD news hype is that most people are more sensitive about bees now and won't kill them as quick. :)
The bad thing is that they really think they are doing you a favor when they call you because they don't want to kill the behive in the attic that is still surviving after 3 extermination efforts :roll:
Rick
It is truly amazing what people will tell you when you've accepted a job and are on your way with it. Then, the real truths come out. It's like confession. Did a removal about two months ago, when I was done, the lady decided to tell me that it was the 6th time they had had bees on that side of the building.
Firefighters have my number phone, they call me to remove the swarms. And once they told me that there was one swarm in a "dangerous" place because there were children playing around.
When I arrive at place and I can´t see any swarm. There was a wall, clean wall, and no bees. But I could see a little mountain of stones on the floor. Yes, bees died by stoning.
Now we can understand why El Niño (the child). Because they are a poltergeist :evil:
QuoteNow we can understand why El Niño (the child).
El Nino... boy. Boys are crazy. Sounds like something mine would try.
Rick
Got a call from a woman who said that a swarm came out of her wall and clustered in her sun room. I got there and sure enough, there were bees in the sun room, but not many, and I couldn't find a queen among the few that were there. I began explaining how a swarm leaves with a queen to set up a new colony, and the drunken husband standing in the doorway suddenly pipes up, "I guess I shouldn't have sucked them into the shop vac then, huh?" We end up poking around the bee parts piled in the bottom of the vac, and every time he saw a drone, he exclaimed, "there's another queen!" Finally, "There's lots of queens there -- this is your lucky day!"
Not really.
-- Kris