It’s pretty unusual for us to find an underground beehive, so I was surprised to get a call to a job where they were entering a drainage pipe in a retaining wall. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started this job but was pleasantly surprised not to be digging mounds of gravel away, instead the bees had made their home inside this neat retaining wall drainage structure.

To top things off, I found the queen almost immediately!

This really was not an ideal place for the bees to setup. Even though they had unlimited room to expand, their roof was porous and would have let plenty of water drip though in rainy weather. Ultimately I think they will be happy with the move into a nice dry bee box

There was no need to get out the bee-vac for this removal as the numbers weren’t huge and cutting the comb to put into frames was a pretty straight forward job. The bees were nice and docile and I got away with zero stings this time!