Bees by post....sort of

[HM Honey]

Did a great job at the weekend. Royal Mail called in me and Pete Benefer (of Benefer's Bees) to sort out a few small honey bee nests that they had in their Truck Bays at their Normanton Distribution Centre.

The Bees were causing issues and making the bays unusable so they needed them removing asap.

So I grabbed my home made bee vac and me and Pete attended their site and removed the nests, comb and all. The nests were quite easy to get to and in all, we were there maybe 3 hours and Pete got about 15 stings on his hands coz he forgot his gloves....lol

A great experience and Royal Mail paid us £50 each AND bought us 4 Poly Nucs each....

I could do with more jobs like that....

 

[Apple]

I recall being requested to remove a swarm of bees from a rural post box outside Ottery, must have been some twenty years ago. I had to get the local postman to open the post box as he was not allowed to let me have the keys, poor chap must have got a good 20 stings to his hands!
Got a propper lambasting in the local paper as the postman could not sort letters for about a week and a lot of people did not get their junk mail that day too.
I did offer him a pair of gloves, but the postman insisted they were unnecessary as he said he had met a local beekeeper, who had bees so friendly, that gloves were never needed!!!

I no longer collect swarms of bees, settled or not!

James

 

[starcana]

I collected a good swarm from a postbox a few weeks ago. They 'ran' up the cloth to my neighbours hive in my field. a week later, they cleared off. Maybe too close to home? we were lent a key by Royal Mail and we gave them the only letter in the box when we returned the key.