Well these bees were certainly not jaded – they had plenty of enthusiasm to leave their colony and cluster up on this beautiful jade plant in Redwood City. Of course they needed to go so we helped with that. There are happily setting up shop in nice new hive box in Woodside.

Well, there is a first time for everything. I have been waiting to see something like this after hearing stories and it finally happened. This swarm of bees had clustered on a car and prevented the owner from going to work. So we got to work vacuuming these bees up and relocating them to our apiary in Woodside. Happy bees, happy caller, happy Beekeeper.

In this picture you can see a lovely swarm of bees that had clustered around the branch of a tree about 8 feet off the ground in San Carlos. It almost looked like the tree was wearing a fuzzy yellow and black sweater :-)

The oak tree in this picture is a Heritage Oak in Menlo Park that has been around for more than 100 years. As is common with these old oaks, cavities develop and swarms of bees move in. These guys were a little too close for comfort so we initiated a trap out. In this case however, the trap out turned into an all at once vacuum rescue. The bees had all left the colony in a panic and collected on the outside of the tree where they drew out some comb and were waiting for a pick up.

It is interesting what bees will decide to move into. This is a tumbling recycle bin that a swarm decided was just the right amount of space in Redwood City. The bees took up residence and were discovered by the homeowner who was depositing some scraps into the compost bin.

This was a really active colony of bees living in the floor of a shed that was going to be demolished in San Carlos. It would not have been a good thing to have bees flying around while the shed was being cut up for removal so the floor was opened in the colony removed for this project.

This was a pretty sizable colony in a floor joist about 15 feet off the ground. It was a straight forward exposure and took 3 hours to safely collect all the bees, cut out all the wax comb, and then reassemble the structure. All in all a great project and bee rescue.

A few times a year we get a call about bees in an irrigation or electrical box and is a great example of how they look. We were able to successfully rescue the colony and cage the queen which is good news for everyone.

This colony is about one month old and was in the wall of a backyard shed in nearby San Mateo. The thermal camera showed exactly where the bees were and that made it easy to open up the structure, vacuum out the bees, place the comb inside an empty hive box and successfully captured the queen. These are very peaceful bees and you should be a great colony to propagate.

Received a call from a homeowner who was in the process of having a fence replaced but the work could not continue because these were flying out of it. I was able to pop off some boards and expose the colony which was easily removed and relocated. This was a very healthy colony and a pleasure to save.