Enjoy this short video of a big ‘0l live beehive removal in New Braunfels, Texas.
This older ranch home just west of New Braunfels was being torn down to make way for more homes – New Braunfels is growing like crazy! The demolition company reached out and said the bees were holding up the works, so I got there quick as I could.
I climbed up on the roof first to check out the bee’s entry and exit point and was able to pull back some boards to reveal the top of the hive, mostly honey, and to see that it extended down into an interior wall.
Because the building was slated for demolition, I didn’t have to be dainty about opening up the wall to get to the bees, and I pulled back a number of courses of shiplap to discover a massive hive. These bees had been there for years!
I just love to see wild comb like this and it teaches me so much to see how the bees like to build things on their own – it helps me to do right by them when I mimic their natural hive in one of my boxes in the apiary.
The bees were not particularly aggressive and I was able to work without gloves, but not without a veil – they were gunning to sting my nose the whole time.
I took about 75 pounds of honey out of this wall, which I then hauled off and fed to my bees out in a yard — it’s kind of risky to eat honey from a wall considering that folks might have tried to exterminate these bees in the past.
The bees filled two 5-gallon vacuum containers, which I then took out to the bee yard and introduced to their new home. So far they’re doing great!
I love it when folks call me instead of exterminating a hive of bees. 🙂