SAVING BEES FROM A BOREHOLE UNDERGROUND!

Hey everyone, make no mistake bee-keeping is not easy saving them even less so. Bees are incredibly smart creatures and always make their homes in the most secure area, which makes our rescue missions mostly very difficult. On this particular occasion in a borehole, unlucky us, but rescue them we had to.

Turns out once we had removed the lid was not that tough after all.

These pics were taken after we had removed the lid from the borehole casing. The bees had made their combs as we suspected from the roof of this heavy metal lid. We knew this would be the case as we know bees, luckily this proved to be so. We had placed two boxes side by side, we then removed the metal lid with combs attached and gently placed them on each box sturdily so that we could work from the bottom.

With our red light intoe and super sucker ready we got to work. We initially administered some smoke to calm these bees down, before we started sucking them off the combs and safely into our catcher box. They were calm and we got to work gently removing them from their combs.

Here our client took this pic of us carrying the borehole lid (steel) with the bee-hive/combs attached to the bottom. We put it on our temporary stand in order to gently remove combs and bees to re-hive and re-locate.

As far as rescues go this one was very clean, we normally find ourselves knees deep in mud, under wendy houses, in roof ceilings and more weird and wonderful locations. This was nice and clean as we were simply working on the well manicured grass, albeit on our knees lying down etc. Bee rescue certainly is gruelling work, very rewarding though.

When we arrived at the clients house and as per usual they pointed us in the direction of the bees. They were under this lid, if you look really closely you will see them peaking out .

The client was in a really nice suburb my South African mates will know it well (Waterkloof) so everything was immaculate, she got her gardener to remove a few flowers for us as not to trample them and we got to work..

Here we are sucking bees off combs administering a little cold smoke once every ten minutes odd and working well as a team as we do, my partner is 68 years old and has more energy than myself in my thirties, such a pleasure to work with, a true workhorse extraordinaire he certainly is, I could not have asked for a more committed, fun, hard-working partner with a passion for bees rivaled to only myself!

How awesome are these? Thousands of bees clustered together. This is bees natural 'flight response' after been administered a little cold smoke. This makes it much easier for us to work with them. They also generally cluster on one side of the hive so we are able to remove the combs with ease and not without damaging bees!

Most of these pics of the combs are all capped brood comb, these larvae will hatch in a few days so it is vital for us not to use too much smoke, handle with the utmost care as not to damage them and then install them in their new frames in their new hive with the 'nurse bees' as well as the rest of the swarm as soon as we possibly can.

Do read up more on Nurse Bees here as per www.animals.mom.me very interesting indeed: https://animals.mom.me/nurse-honey-bee-4956.html

This picture here the white comb in the foreground is nectar just put into the comb not capped, the bees will fill this up within a few days and then cap. A 'ripening process' occurs thus converting the raw nectar into honey. Anything that goes through a bee is extremely healthy, the process of nectar been stored in a bee and then 'regurgitated' adds all sorts of beneficial bacteria thus enabling for the creation of honey. If I have to put it as literally and 'bluntly' as I can: Honey is essentially BEE PUKE, crazy right? :)

All the darker combs on the right much older combs I would guess a year or more with larvae inside, again capped brood comb!

Here we have the full swarm in our 'catcher box' sucked up safely and ready to be installed into their new hive!

Here we have already fastened the comb into the hive frames. We do so with rubber bands, the bees re-attach these combs to the frames and then collectively work together to cut off and extract the rubber bands, incredible.

Once we were done and dusted this is what was left, a little wax on the metal lid and the borehole restored to working order before the bees moved in!

We have become 'hero's' in these parts apparently, more and more folks are beginning to appreciate our good work saving bees, it is so nice to be able to spread the word and importance of saving our bees becoming more of a priority to not only us but more and more folks daily too.

Myself on the left and my partner on the right posing in our bee-suits for the client!

Going into Winter now things have calmed down a little, due to the colder weather bees are not as willing to move, hence the phone calls to rescue bees slowed down a little, a short Winter in South Africa and back to Spring I am sure we will be saving many millions more bees again.

Another successful bee rescue, 40 000 odd bees rescued and relocated safely to carry on doing the amazing work they do for the heath of all living creatures on Earth!

Be sure to stay tuned for more of my epic bee-keeping adventures!

Cheer$;)