Early October and already it feels like the middle of summer, the air is heavy and it seems storm season is here. It’s common advise to avoid working with bees when a storm is around as they can get agitated, but once we start a cut out job we need to work through until we are done, rain, hail or shine; this bee hive removal in Noosa had it all.

Fortunately these girls were pretty gentle despite the storm and even more fortunately I found the queen in the first few minutes! Once the queen is found and caged I can work a lot faster without the fear of vacuuming her up with the other bees. The bee aren’t harmed by the vacuum, but it’s much better to cage the queen so she can be used to attract all of the forager bees into a catch-box placed at the original hive entry.

Some clients are a little sceptical about what might be behind the wall, but always surprised and maybe a little horrified when they see what is actually there. This was one of those jobs that turned out to be a bit bigger than anticipated. The bees were first noticed about 2 weeks ago but had evidently been in the wall for at least 6 weeks and had consequently really made themselves at home.