Tree Bee Rescue

(All Photos at the bottom of this post are in a gallery)

Early January during the storms I had a phone call from a tree surgeon, he was dealing with a tree that had fallen on a power line that contained a large colony of bees. Luckily this had only happened 5 minutes up the road, so I grabbed my bee kit and headed out. Upon arrival it was pretty evident this was a large colony of bees, they had built their colony at the base of the tree and the tree snapped at the base leaving the bees exposed to the elements. It was chucking down with rain and it was highs of 6-7 degrees, the place was full of tree surgeons and Western power workers, so my main priority at this point was just securing the bees, so everyone could carry out the jobs they needed to.

I took away the exposed comb made a temporary block off in the hole of the tree and

butted a poly nuc up to the entrance, it was mostly to block off any drafts coming through and to offer a bit of insulation, of course, there was a very small chance with it being a nuc they may have found it a more suitable dwelling due to the tree exposing them. The weather after this was windy, cold and damp and I felt it best to leave them in place until it had warmed up, I had no idea at the point just how big this colony was going to be, id pop down every week just to check in the nuc, but left the actual bees alone until it warmed up. I was very sceptical about their survival given the weather conditions that all this was going on in, but low and behold they were holding up.

My uncle took up beekeeping not long after me and is also chainsaw trained and just generally a super useful person to have around when doing outdoor jobs so naturally, I planned for us to both pop down asses the situation and come up with a plan for extraction.

Now this is where things didn't quite go to plan at the time it had warmed up the chainsaw was in for its yearly service, so we decided to take a couple of bow saws down to see if we could find out what was happening inside the tree, it fast became evident this colony was a lot bigger than we had first anticipated and there was no way were getting these bees without the chainsaw.

My uncle and I are both very busy people so it took a bit of time to get us and the chainsaw together all on the same day but we sorted a day and we're good to go, the day before we had planned to extract with the chainsaw I had been down to do my weekly check make sure they were still alive and in the tree when I arrived the grounds which contain the tree where full of workmen, mostly driving heavy machinery directly in front of the tree (a typical face, hand, palm moment). I get on the phone with my uncle to explain the situation and we decided to just head down later that evening once the work had stopped for the day, pissy bees, heavy machinery, and unsuited workers, it was never going to be easy.

By this point, I had managed to get a hold of a thermal imagining camera from a friend, for those of you that don't know bees produce enough heat that we can pick them up on thermal imaging if, inside a wall or tree etc, I took some pictures assessed them, sent them over to my uncle he had a good old look and came up with a decent plan.

So we rock up with all sorts of gear between the chainsaw stuff and the beekeeping stuff we really must have looked a right pair, everything is going great and the bees are relatively calm, old-schoolers will say the vibration of the chainsaw calms the bees, its the smell of the fuel coming from the machinery that pisses them off, either way, it made the job a tad easier with them being calm.

We are cutting away extracting comb, and putting brood comb into frames with elastic bands to hold in place ( the bees will dispose of the elastic bands once they secure the comb to the frame.) it was going great, we were amazed by the size of the colony and again how calm they where.

It was at this point things started to change, what we hadn't realised where the top half of the tree had dropped over the hedge into the field, across a big ditch, the trunk split in 2, something you couldn't see from the outside of the tree, nor on the thermal imaging camera. The bees, of course, were in the most awkward part of the trunk, the split that wrapped underneath into the brambles and on top of a metal fence, we were now losing light and the temperatures were starting to drop off so we secure the tree back up and head home.

This was a job we needed to do during the day so we had plenty of time to take the tree apart because at this point we are like 1.5 meters into the tree with no end of bees in site. Remember we can't do anything during the week in the day because of the workers and the machinery, we waited the week, at this point I was itching to get back, we had disturbed them a lot and I had a feeling they may just leave.

The week passed we got down there in the morning all kitted up and low and behold the activity around the stump had dropped rite off and they had swarmed. Of course, there were still some bees left, I had made a split from another colony 2 days before and had a couple of spare queen cells due to emerge in the next day or 2 so I made up a nuc with the remainder of the bees and the queen cells in. It takes a while for a queen to emerge, head out on a mating flight and then start laying again, so they have now been left to it until it is time for us to go make the first checks. Those bees had been in the tree for at least 4 years, unsure of what pest or diseases these bees may be carrying we will quarantine them until we know what we are dealing with.

Sometimes with beekeeping, things don't always go to plan but we have to work with what we have and deal with situations as best as we can, it's always unpredictable when working with animals and weather. I will be back with more updates once we have done our first inspection, once the queen is back from her mating flight and starts laying.