Madison County Beekeepers Help Protect the Schoolchildren

at Lincoln School, Huntsville, Alabama

By
Hal Green

I got a call recently from the Maintenance Supervisor of the Huntsville City School System. He had a swarm of bees at the Maintenance Shed. So I went over and picked them up and while we talked, he mentioned he had a problem with bees inside a school and asked if I could help. I suspected it was Lincoln School because I had been called about 3 or 4 times there last year but each time I got there the swarm was gone. Now they are inside the building, in two places! I told the Supervisor that a cherry picker or scaffolding would be required to get them. He said he could get a two-man cherry picker if I needed. So I said get one over there tomorrow afternoon between 1 and 1:30 and we will see what can be done.

The next day, after Bill Mullins and I looked the situation over, I told him we needed a bracket at one location to hang over the ledge of the roof so we could put a hive there and trap the bees out. At the other location, all we needed was a piece of wood that we would jam in an open space in the side of a column of the building and that would support the other hive. After I gave him the dimensions for the bracket, he said he could have it ready the next day. Our plan was to use traps to let the bees out of their hives within the building but prevent them from returning. We would place small hive boxes near the original hives and hope the bees would decide to form a new home in them. Since school was just now in recess for the summer, it would be an opportune time to use this technique. So the next day, we make a appointment to meet again at 1 p.m. and we are ready to begin setting up the hives to trap the bees out of the two places they are in the building. His worker brings the bracket and some other tools we needed and we begin to start the process. I gave my camera to the worker and asked him to be the chief photographer. So here's a few shots of what we did today.

Here we are getting up in the world. The bee entrance is right in the corner of the column where we are working installing the wire screen trap. We hung the hive bracket temporarily out of the way at the left of the bucket.

After the trap is in place and sealed all around, we moved the bracket over and placed a hive on the bracket. This hive contains a frame of brood with bees and a queen cell and four empty frames with foundation. The queen should hatch out in a few days, then mate and (hopefully) return and begin raising a new colony. We hope the bees that leave the building but can't get back in the building, will decide it's best for them to go into the new hive with the new queen.

We're finished here and are backing away. You can just make out the trap end as the little line above the hive and to the right of the bracket.

At this second location, we place a piece of wood in between the blocks of the column. We will set the second hive on this wood.

Here we have installed the second trap. You can see it projecting away from the side of the building.

Here we are drilling mounting holes for the trap. We want to make sure the trap does not come loose from the wall, so we add mounting screws to the wall that will hold the trap securely to the wall.

After the trap has been secured, we place the hive on the wood base near the trap.

Since we didn't have a bracket for this set up, we decide to tie a heavy cord to the hive to keep it from possibly falling off the wood base mount.

With the string tied, this case is closed. This is a good view of the trap, showing how it extends outward and has a very small opening at the end. The bees can get out, but the can't find the opening to get back in. Hopefully, they will decide to go into the hive, whose entrance is very close to their former entrance.

This is an overall view of the side of the school building where the trap-out hives are. The one at the upper left is about 30 feet high and the one at the lower right is about 12 feet high. We will leave them here for about 5 or 6 weeks and if everything goes well, practically all the bees will be out of the building and into these two hives.

August 2, 2004.

It has been almost 10 weeks since we put the screens and hives at this location, so the bees should mostly be abandoned from the original nests inside the building and now into the boxes we placed there in May.

We started at 5 am this morning. It was still dark but we had the night light at the parking lot for illumination, but it wasn't enough to produce good photos. But the important thing was,- the bees were not flying and as soon as we got in position, we placed an entrance closure on the hive to keep the bees form flying out when we moved it off the bracket and into the bucket for its trip to our bee yard.

Before we started, I told the bucket operator that the bracket was pretty tightly secured to the upper ledge. It was also pretty heavy and we might have to use the bucket to force it loose so we could remove it from the building. So after we got the bee box into the bucket and removed the trap and put expanding foam into the bee nest opening on the wall, we tried without success to lift the bracket. It just wouldn't move. So plan B, use the bucket. We tried that, but that didn't work because the operator was concerned about overloading the equipment. He said it was rated at 500 pounds and we had a load of ourselves and our own equipment of about 400 pounds, plus the weight of the bracket, so there wasn't much to play with. We didn't want to take the chance of the bucket breaking loose with us in it. So Plan C, -get a crowbar and force it loose. That worked and we were able to finally lift it off and into the bucket and completed this portion of the work. I forgot about the camera when we started, but after we got down, I took this photo showing the box and bracket removed and the operator getting ready to move the truck to the next location.

This is a not-so-very-good photo taken during the removal of the second bee box. We have just placed an entrance closure on it and are taking it off the support and will place it in the bucket.

This is a little better photo showing us removing the screws that held the bee box support to the wall. The bee box and its support are both in the bucket and after we remove these screws and the metal band, we will remove the trap itself and fill the opening to the bee nest in the building with expanding foam.

We are now removing the screws that hold the trap itself to the wall. We are nearly finished now,-after we take the trap away,all that remains is to fill the hole in the wall with expanding foam so the bees cannot return again and make a new nest.

Well, the sun is now up, all the equipment secured, we're finished and getting ready to leave. The school maintenance supervisor, the bucket operator and the beeman engage in small talk before leaving.

This job required four visits by us. The initial visit was to survey the area and plan our work, including a design of the bracket and traps. The second was to install the traps, the bracket and the bee boxes. The third was to fix one trap and take some bees out of one of the boxes because it was so full, and the last was this trip, to remove all the equipment and fill the holes in the wall with expanding foam. Each trip was an hour or less in duration.

The school children are now safe from bees and we have added three new bee hives to our apiaries.

This case is closed!