John Maddrell’s Bee Adventure
I received a call from a guy in Clearwater who heard I sometimes do bee removals. I usually won’t bother with it unless the bees are fairly easy to get at. This one was in a birdhouse for some months and fairly accessible so I decided to have a go at transplanting the bees from their bird house home to a more official beehive residence. John had expressed an interest to come see my bees, so I thought this might be a fun adventure. My wife Yukiko came along to do some picture taking as well. You can click on each picture to enlarge it.
The Homeowner, his son, John and I survey the problem. The bees were amazingly calm!
Those aren't birds who have moved in!
John was going to bring sandals. I gave him more appropriate boots.
I give John his first safety briefing. He seems unsure.
The new beekeeper and his gear.
These are special beekeeping gloves. They are special because they keep you from having lots of pain later. 
The homeowner's son decided he wanted to get involved. Luckily I bought along an extra suit for him too.
One of their neighbors drove by and did a serious double-take. They had no idea what to make of this scene.
Apollo 13? The 3 Beekeeper Stooges? The captions options are endless here. John is the short one on the right! lol
Working the problem. How to get the birdhouse off of the metal pole? It was screwed on from inside and out!
After a meeting of the minds, it is decided to use a power hacksaw to cut the metal pole under the birdhouse to remove it so we can work opening it!
Now you see it......
Now you don't!
Some very confused bees. Where did my house go?
A few tugs with a prybar and voila.....honeycomb!
Is that cool or what?
Time for some surgery. You have to cut the honeycomb in pieces and transplant to new frames to convert this hive to a standard beehive box. It's a sticky hot job with stinging bees all around!
The bees were amazingly calm and nice. The nicest bees I've ever worked with in fact!
But I still wouldn't recommend trying this without a proper beesuit!
It was a true 3 man project, everyone pitched in.
This is how you do it.
John showed no fear! A born beekeeper.
Some of the pieces of honeycomb were huge!
Neato!
We didn’t get any pictures of the finished product. I have to leave the new bee hive boxes in place to collect stragglers over the next few days. In a couple of days I will go back to pick up the beehive. I will take some pictures of the finished beehive then and post them here.
Til then….
Musashi
EDIT:
One of the 3 beekeeping amigo’s from that day, Adi, the homeowners’s son, sent me this photo of the mostly finished beehive. We put it back in the original spot of the birdhouse. I still need to take the beehive away to my apiary.
The Bees will move in completely in a few days.
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