The Bartlett Bee Whisperer, David Glover, hails from West Tennesee, East Arkansas, and North Mississippi. And as you have probably gathered by this point — he is a professional honey bee rescuer.
David relocates as well as repopulates bees after rescuing them from either a resident or a business, housing them in empty hive boxes of local beekeepers who have lost colonies of their own.
David urges folks to call a beekeeper instead of pest control and will often get a call from a homeowner who is concerned with a bee problem that seems huge — like, if the bees are located too high or behind a huge brick wall.
And in this particular case, a huge brick wall was the obstacle David faced in Germantown, Tennesee. David stepped in after the local pest control failed to extract the hive, while attempting to kill the bees.
“Here’s the wall,” David wrote on Facebook. “The pest control company has tried to kill the hive, unsuccessfully.”
“The bees were entering the wall via a weep hole between the bricks (dark area bottom/center) as well as via a gap between the bricks and the corner of the window.”
“The large red spot is the brood area of the hive. The thin red line on the left is the weep hole entrance.”
“The first thing I did after smoking the entrances was to spray some Honey Bandit in the small hole I’m drilling in this photo. That helped keep the bees from running up the wall when I kicked on the hammer drill.”
“The first brick is out in one piece.”
“Two rows of bricks out.”
“Five rows out.”
“This is what I mean by AWESOME. The comb wasn’t overly-attached to the bricks AND this is one of the largest single pieces of comb I’ve ever seen! With the exception of seven narrow honeycombs in the center top of the hive, this was two large flat combs.”
“At the bottom of the front comb were five of the thirteen capped queen cells in this hive.”
“Removing a slice of brood comb holding seven of the thirteen queen cells. On the left side of the hive, I found a large number of dead bees. I assume this is where the pest control applicator tried to kill the colony. The wax prevented the spread of the pesticide.”
“Rubber banding the second brood comb.”
“At the vertical mid-line of the hive, the combs joined into a convoluted mess. Slow process removing combs in the middle section where they were all interconnected and tunneled. It’s like the construction crew in this part of the hive was dropping acid. No, that’s not an angel on my shoulder. That was a fun cluster of honey bees singing in my ear. These bees were extremely cooperative to be queenless.”
“While I was cleaning up and organizing to leave, I placed the nuc box in the hole to gather returning foragers.”
“Done! The tan area came from thousands of dirty little feet. Kind of cool when you think about all the times your Mom told you to wipe your feet before coming into the house. Mom was right, ‘You’ll track up the place.’”
You can watch a play by play of the removal, below.
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