Beehives and Colonies
Summer is the time of year when beehives can spring up in gardens, and a newly established hive can certainly be problematic. However, if a hive is allowed to establish under the right conditions and with sufficient time, it can be home to well over 100,000 bees! How do you deal with the removal of a hive? If you’re thinking of tackling it with a can of Doom, think again.
Rietha Crafford is a Johannesburg bee keeper, and whilst she claims she’s had her fair share of stings in this line of work, she doesn’t mind as she says she loves bees and bee keeping. Rietha also specialises in removing beehives from gardens, and rather than adopting a lethal approach towards the hive, she prefers to relocate these busy creatures to a new home whenever possible.
But what happens to all those bees that are out collecting pollen when the hive is removed, as these bees will return to find their home is no longer there? If it was a large established hive that was removed, it may seem as if the area is still swarming with bees; these bees will eventually move on to another hive and join the new colony. And they’re not silly creatures … they’ll bring some pollen or nectar to the new hive and will eventually be accepted there as worker bees.
Due to this ‘dislodgement’, Rietha says she prefers to remove a hive either early in the morning or late at night so that most of the bees are at home. Worker bees tend to be out between 10:00 and 16:00 (and whilst we may think a 6 hour working day isn’t too bad, bear in mind they don’t have weekends off), and when Rietha re-establishes a hive she likes to have as many worker bees present as possible. Inevitably though, some of the worker bees will be lost, but this results in an excess of honey from the removed hive and this extra food helps the relocated hive re-establish itself very quickly.
Rietha says killing bees is always a last resort, and will only do this if a hive is located in a place that makes it impossible to remove, such as inside a building cavity accessed only through a small opening. The importance of bees to our survival is a fact not lost on her and most people, she says, are not aware that the honey bee is responsible for about 70% of all the food we eat! Unlike America or Europe, South Africa doesn’t have a wealth of pollinating insects, making us even more dependent on the humble little honey bee.
But as much as we need our bees, we must also respect the hazard a well-established beehive poses, when in close proximity to areas where humans live or are engaged in outdoor activities. If a person is allergic to bee stings, a single sting could prove fatal. For the rest of us, Rietha advises that the best way to treat a sting is with ice. Frozen packs of vegetables work very well for this purpose, and she recommends keeping the cold-pack applied for at least an hour or two until the stings no longer burns; this should help enormously in reducing the reaction and the swelling.
Rietha Crafford can be contacted on 072-934-9060 or at rietha-c@ophrah.co.za.
