Beekeepers Jim Metrailer, Jeremy Bemis, and I removed a
colony of honey bees from the wall of a building and transferred the combs and
bees into a Kenyan Top Bar Hive. Bees often find the empty space between the
inner and outer walls of buildings as suitable cavities for nesting. Indeed,
wall spaces are quite similar to cavities in hollow trees, the natural home of
honey bees. We exposed the combs of the colony’s nest by removing the
building’s weather boards as shown in today’s photo. The entrance into the
bees’ hive, a small opening between the removed boards and the remaining boards
on the right, was coated with propolis. This sticky substance, with
antibacterial and antifungal properties, helps protect the hive from harmful
pathogens. One can often identify a bee tree, a damaged tree with a hollow
cavity housing a feral honey bee colony, by a dark, shiny propolis stain
surrounding a knot hole where the bees enter the tree. The same shiny stain can
also be found where bees enter the walls of a building. Honey bees varnish
their hive with propolis, a substance that they gather from the gums and saps
of trees. The layer of propolis is particularly evident on the rough-hewn weather
boards. When we build bee hives, rough interior surfaces encourage the bees to
build-up propolis on the wood to protect the hive. The somewhat pungent odor of
propolis surely adds to each hive’s distinct odor.
When we cut the combs out of the wall of the building, we sorted
the combs according to their use by the bees. Some held brood; some pollen and
bee bread; some held stores of honey. Using strings, we tied the combs onto
hive top bars and placed them in the new hive. The Top Bar Hives was arranged
as a natural bee hive with the brood near the entrance surrounded by pollen and
bee bread. Combs of stored honey were placed in the rear of the hive.
--Richard
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