So now I have the pics up, thank you Katharine Elizabeth Henry Alexander, and I can tell the tale with photo back up. Yesterday we went to OKC to help William Little acquire a hive that was somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 feet in the air on a branch. The swarm showed up last month and decided it just liked the area. No hole in tree, no kind of protection, Im talkin swayin in the breeze on a branch with a half dozen or so slices of comb. The first thing that happend had nothing to do with moi. Will had come up with this ingenious plan to build a Rube Goldberg device that we could pull up and over the hive to grasp the branch so that when we sawed through the branch we could lower it down gently. Loren took his idea and refined it a tad but they spent the better part of half an hour or more putting this gizmo together. I dont know if we got any close ups of it, if not Ill get some from Will later. Then we had to build a bunch of frames. Will had a Tanzanian box but no frames made. A Tanzanian is a deep hive body box, built three times as long. Its so you can manipulate the bee frames without lifting so you dont squish so many bees lifting the frames out. Pretty cool. Wouldnt want to do more than use it as a tool for working bees like we did today..for honey and such..langstroths are the way for me to go but more on that later. We used this nifty jig Will built to make the frames and I can tell you this much. Loren Shepard s got some work to do. Because I need one of those bad boys in the worst way. We put thirty frames together in like half an hour using staples and that jig and some glue. Duuuuude. Do you know how many hours Ive spent putting frames together one at a time? It isnt pretty and I didnt use glue and Im surprised the stupid things are still together..but..no use crying over built hives, right? We put rubber bands on the frames in order to hold the comb as we pull the hive off the branch later, then Loren and Will go put the scaffolding up. By now its time to get Linda Short from work so we take a break, we dont want to get the hive too early, we want as many as the foragers to find the hive as we can. So we went to the Paseo in OKC and had lunch about 4 oclock, pizza and salad for me n Loren and it was fabulous if you ever get a chance to go. There are some expensie places down in that district..I think this place was called SOS? Anyway, little hole in the wall eatery, but probably the best pizza weve had, and thats saying something..we eat a lot of pizza..:) Had to take a walk after food or we were going coma out and ended up in this funky little shop with incense and I got a new whistle for the grand kids to play with and Loren got some new sandalwood incense..Neat place. Back to the bees..I felt like I said that alot yesterday. Will is so much fun to chat with, even Loren comes out of his wall flower mode and gets caught up in conversation..Burning daylight boys, gotta get this done! Yes, Rene the pusher with a work ethic and all that jazz..No comments from the peanut gallery, if you please. We take the Rube Golderberg, a plumbob, a tackle, a whole lot of rope and twine and stuff, off we troop. I almost forgot the two lengths of 2x2x12 they patched together to make a more than 10 ft pole, why? Cause there are just some things you have to touch with more than a 10 ft pole.. They put a cup hook on the end of the pole to place the twine with the plumbob over the branch to take the rope up. And that worked. Then we tied the RG up and sent it up and used the pole to adjust the device over the branch. So far so good. At this point we went in to suit up, everybody got some kind of protection in case the bees were hostile, they werent, or in case we dropped them. Its time by golly. No suger, no smoke. Just four dorks in some kind of bee thing or another, a pole arm knife with a limb lopper, and a camera. Will took off some branches, then he remaneuvered the RG over the branch a little better then started cutting. We had some other impromptu advice to give the guy doing the work but he managed to figure it out without too much frustration at the rest of us on the ground. And then it was free. And the RG worked. IT WORKED! The arms came down and even tho it was off balance because of the weight of the limb vs the weight of the hive blah blah..it didnt fall! I couldnt believe we were doing this in the amazing wind we had yesterday. I couldnt believe the gizmo worked! Now Loren is lowerint the hive, Wills guiding it down and guess whos catching? No weight to it at all. Just mostly bees and some brood. I took it over to the Tanzi and waited for the crew. William came and made some decisions about how he wanted to do things. We had some comb pop off, we picked that up and added it to a frame, he cut the majority of the comb off the limb and placed them. We think we spotted the queen..were hoping..He wanted to put waxed frames in with the combes..we got down to the last bit of branch and he decided to just place it in the hive for a few days to give the bees a chances to hatch any brood that may have lived..we were able to see some that had been cut through on the branch..they were about half done..I think he made the right choice there, I was just going to shake and put the branch on the door but I wasnt thinking about potential brood on the limb. He snapped some plastic base into frames and placed them in the hive, then he put the cover boards on and the telescope tops. And that part was over.Whew After a break to let things settle a bit and get out of the space suits, we went back out and cleaned up our mess, got all the tools and bits and pieces picked up and the scaffolding taken down and all that after job cleanup done, it was time to head home. Always hard for me, ending a big, complicated, dangerous job. I usually want to talk until I go unconcious then wake up in the morning and go home. But Loren likes to sleep in his own bed so with fond farewells, off to home. Quite a day! Perhaps a once in a life time event for Loren, hes not so hep on bee cut outs and such but still, he said he wouldnt have missed this for the world and neither would I. Will is going to beesit this hive through the winter, unless something drastic happens and he has to meld the hive. If it lives, well transfer it to a langstroth box and Ill bring it home in the early spring. For now, they are safe, fed, hopefully content in their new digs. The End.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 12:39:22 +0000
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