hubby said:
"The bee removal was one of our hardest yet. They were between two floors (1st and 2nd). We pulled off the wooden siding to get to the bees from the outside. They were in the floor joists. We removed enough to see we couldn't’t get it all from the inside. We went upstairs and cut a hole in the sub floor. They were everywhere. It was probably back from the wall 4-5’ and the floor joists were about a foot across and about that deep FULL of comb. Easy two brood boxes full. Luckily we brought my vacuum and his because we needed it with all the bees we got. I’m probably going to go back later this week to suck up the few we missed. There were tons of drones so we might need to requeen anyway. There are tons of bees to make it successful even with a new queen. I haven’t talked that over with Lee yet. Not sure if he’s getting the hive or if we are. For as many bees as there were they were pretty tame. Lee got stung on the knee (think he squished one), I got stung on the chin because I needed to take my hat off and I let one in, and then I think I squished one under my arm (that one hurts). The family wanted to make sure we were able to save all the brood and every last bee. She got stung under the nose (she nearly cried) and she asked if there was a way that they could sting and not die. Almost laughed that even after being stung on the nose she was worried about one bee dying when we had up wards of 80 THOUSAND bees. I guess I understand, but still kind of funny. They had a kid about 11 or 12 that was really excited about suiting up and looking at the bees with us, until we actually opened everything up and he saw all the bees. He didn’t come anywhere close to the hive after his mom got stung. The dad was an Aussie and his accent was pretty strong."
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They guys went back to the home in Arlington on April 7th to catch the remaining bees. Hubby said that there were tons of dead bees in the house. He suspects that when they opened up the wall to get at the hive, the bees were able to get into the room, but not able to find their way out again. It is funny (and sweet) that with 80 thousand bees, these guys are worried about the death of a few hundred of them.
Since the comb and removal was such a mess from this site, they were not able to reuse much of the comb in the newly relocated hive. Our friends were able to extract 14lbs of honey from this hive. The honey was mostly uncapped, so it has a strong, raw flavor that is not like anything I have tasted before. Not unpleasant, but just very different. Hubby does not like it, but I'm still undecided. Undecided enough to use nearly half a small jar in my various cups of tea over the last 2 weeks...
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