The woman’s daughter called from California and said that her mother in Hawaii had bees. I went to remove them. They were in a box she used as an accent on her patio. There were a lot of bees and they were hard to get out. I give everyone the same speech when I remove bees. I tell them that there will be bees there for about 1 week. After I was done I asked for payment. The woman said she wasn’t going to pay me because there were still bees flying around. We argued a bit, then she tells me that I destroyed her prize orchid. I was working on the other side of the patio from the orchid. I finally told her that she expected a miracle, but it wasn’t going to happen. We resolved things.

The people are selling the house and needed the bees removed from under the shed. This is a metal shed without any tree cover. The day we started removing them was so hot! The humidity was way up and being in the shed was like an oven. We had to cut a 4X4 foot hole in the floor to get them. We took home 32 pounds of honey from this hive. We filled all five frames of the nuc

About two years ago a Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal guy called and said he wanted to keep bees, could I help him get some. I could and did. He placed them at the EOD range where he worked. Being in the Navy he moved, and someone else took them over. That guy moved and no one took them over and they just sat. I got a call the other day from the Navy EOD commander, he asked if I could help remove some bees. He explained that one of his guys was keeping them and then left. He told me the guys name and I just had to laugh. We went to collect them. One hive was empty, but the other two were packed! They had brood, honey and all of the frames filled out. We moved them and they are doing fine.

The guy called and said he had bees under his outdoor bar on his patio. His son was making lei’s and he thought maybe that attracted them. I assured him that that wasn’t the case. When we got there he told us he was a Sargent in the police. I asked him why he didn’t just arrest them for trespassing. He said that trying to get the fingerprints off of that many bees just wasn’t worth the hassle. There was a little bit of comb so they had planned on staying for a while.

One thing about doing this type of work is you meet friendly people most times. That was the case with these people. They had never seen a swarm, and were very curious about the process. I told them what they wanted to know. Reaching the palm frond was a bit of a stretch but I was able to get them down.

She said the swarm was in a bush not very high up. When I got there I saw they were in a bushy tree about 7 feet up. During swarm season I drive my Toyota, and carry my bee stuff with me. However I can’t carry a ladder so I borrowed a step ladder and shook them into my bucket. They were ready to move! Most of them settled down right away and I got most of them.

When the guy called he said all I would have to do is move one tire outside and I could get the bees. When I got there I saw a mountain of tires! The bees had gotten inside them were quite happy. I started moving tires to get to them, and found they kept going deeper into the pile. I scooped and smoked, most of them came out, but there were a lot I couldn’t get too.

The guy called and said he had bees in a bird house. He said we could take the bird house. What he didn’t say was that the thing was for ducks! And he didn’t say it was in the back yard, and the steps to get from the back area were narrow. We got it out of the tree but couldn’t get it stable enough to get it down the stairs. We had to go back the next day and take it apart and put the bees in a nuc to get them out. The guy was very nice and even helped with the removal!

Kualoa Ranch is a film location. I got a call from them saying that one of the Jurassic series had bees in a stump. He told me it was a styrofoam stump and gave me a general location.
We got there and started looking, we couldn’t find where the bees were. We saw a stump a bit away, but we ALL thought this was a real stump. Nikki went over and looked at the last place we could think of. It was the stump with the bees. It was so real! They even had bark that looked real! Thankfully it was built in sections and came apart after some work. The queen had died and when we opened it up the bees started swarming us. We had to take breaks to get away from them. Every time we scooped most of the bees they would fly back to a section of the stump. So we decided to scoop and cover the box as soon as well as we could. We got a lot of bees, but there were a lot of them left. I am impressed with the artistry of the people who could make a stump that big and make it look so real.

The woman called and said there were bees in a speaker box. I made sure I could just load the box up and take them away. Trying to get them out of a speaker box without damaging the whole thing. It was light and in a great place to get to. After I covered it with my sheet and put it in my truck I noticed they were heading for the other speaker box. So I moved it to another place. These people had a front yard and back yard that was full of potted plants. It looked like a plant nursery! The brother said they just liked plants. He even gave me an air plant cutting!