A couple of weeks ago I rescued 3 feral honey bee colonies from Sun Hill in Sunniside. The building is being demolished and the bees faced extermination or rescue by me. News has got around of the rescue and as a result, I was contacted by Riverside Academy, down the road in Dunston. The school had a bird nest box on the wall next to a door onto the school yard. A bumblebee colony was living in it and one child had already suffered a sting. I paid the school a visit last week to have a look and found that the bees could be rescued quite easily and moved to a new site.
Last night I made the return visit to do my bee-Thunderbirds rescue. The work had to be done late as bumblebees continue working much later in the day than honeybees. So we were at the school at 9pm, taped up the entrance to the nest box, unscrewed it from the wall, placed it carefully in our swarm box and put it in the car to take to its new location. By 10.30pm we had it in place on another wall near my house in Sunniside.
I checked on the colony this morning and saw bees flying in and out. (See above photo). Job done. Just waiting for the next bee rescue call. Thunderbees are go!
1 comment:
That's great. I didn't even know you could rescue wild bee colonies. Well done.
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