I picked up a swarm the other day that landed on the pump head at a ladies house. Nice basketball size clump of bees that just marched in the nuc like they were old pros. As I was leaving that site I got a call from a friend who had a cut out to do in a house that was being renovated and he needed help ASAP because the homeowner is terrified of them. Sure, no problem. I'm on my way!
I got to the house and we had to first locate the colony. They were inside a wall, but we couldn't really tell where. We finally decided to go for it and cut out a section of wall and there they were. A good size colony on some pretty white comb. They'd only been there about a week so it was pretty clean. However they went nuts as soon as we started cutting so we pulled out the vac and got what we could. I think the queen got away, but we got most of them anyway. I brought them all home and combined them all in a hive. Yesterday I went back an vacuumed up what was left, but still not sure about the queen, so in they went with the others. If I managed to get the queen yesterday they are just going to have to duke it out because those bees were all kinds of upset when I was finished yesterday.
They're fed and now left to do their thing for a few days before I check on their progress.
Now, the bee crew that I am working with (about 7 or 8 of us) has 3 removals scheduled for this weekend, and 4 more on the horizon. Not counting any swarm calls we may get. It was a slow start up, but now that the season has started we're off and running.
