This beehive removal from a house at Nambour wasn’t anywhere near as big as the Nambour Monster but it certainly had potential to get there. This one was only about 3 months old and was packed with brood comb. In fact every comb contained brood and there was very little honey at all. The pollen stores were fairly substantial, which is just as well with all of those babies to feed.

In the end, I made up 11 frames of brood which was a bit of a problem because I only brought with me a 6-frame poly hive and a 5-frame nuc box. My solution was to shake a pile of bees from the vacuum box into the 5-frame nuc and lock them in for the night (so that they could keep the brood warm) and let the rest of the bees fly back to the 6-frame poly hive to join the other 6 frames of brood and the queen. After returning to my apiary I have since moved all of the frames into a single hive.

The other interesting thing about this job was that it was a good example of how the queen’s survival instincts work. She generally keeps moving away from the action and the light. I spotted her on the third last comb to be removed but wasn’t quick enough to catch her before she disappeared to safety. It wasn’t until I have all of the comb was removed and there were only a few hundred bees left to vacuum that she made another appearance, with her entourage in tow.

Thank you Nick for calling us in to do this beehive removal and to save these bees.