Honey Bees coming and going from your building? Look how quickly a hive can build up in just 6 months. This hive looked pretty spectacular using our thermal imaging infrared camera. We cut this hive out of a ceiling of a house in Coolum Beach and it was a big one. Sometimes when we get these call outs and the owner says that they have only been there for 6 Months, that mean that they were only noticed 6 months ago and quite often they have been working away for much longer.

How do we know? Well the brood comb is a give away. The longer it is in use, the darker it gets as each larvae makes a cocoon to pupate in. As the cocoons line the walls of the cell the comb gets darker until it is almost black. It takes 20 days from egg to emergence and with the cells in constant use by the queen, so in 6 months the cell may have been used 8 or 9 times.

In this case we saw no dark brood comb at all, confirming that this colony had only been there for a relatively short period of time.

Thanks Tom for for calling us in to do this bee hive removal and save these bees.