Anyone ever have this happen to 'em ?

JP · May 29, 2007, 11:04:56 PM

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.

fishawk · May 30, 2007, 01:27:29 AM

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 .

JP · May 30, 2007, 10:52:29 AM

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.

Michael Bush · May 30, 2007, 11:46:09 PM

That's the first question I ask. "did you spray them" The next is "are you going to spray them".

Scadsobees · May 31, 2007, 12:00:37 AM

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

JP · May 31, 2007, 01:01:03 AM

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.

abejaruco · May 31, 2007, 01:58:14 AM

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 canÂ´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 NiÃ±o (the child). Because they are a poltergeist :evil:

Scadsobees · May 31, 2007, 02:45:33 PM

QuoteNow we can understand why El NiÃ±o (the child).

El Nino... boy. Boys are crazy. Sounds like something mine would try.

Rick

Kris^ · May 31, 2007, 11:47:09 PM

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