Swarm Collection needed in London ASAP

[trulli1]

Had a call from a bloke by the name of Derek who can be contacted on:*************.

Swarm is at collected, London.

I took the call at 12:10pm today, swarm was noticed half hour ago.

I would love to have gone, but am in Kent today.

 

[BKF Admin]

Can a member post if the swarm has been collected so I can remove the telephone number/address.

Mark.

 

[drstitson]

any other day and i'd have gone - unfortunately need to get work clear this afternoon ready for an evening flight.

 

[greatbritishhoney]

Wouldn't it have been handy if there was something like a swarm collection map on the internet that this guy could have found about 5 beekeepers with a few miles of him?

 

[djg]

Judging by the location, this could be the same swarm which the LBKA swarm collector and I tried to take in Bermondsey Street, SE1 yesterday afternoon around 2pm.

By the time we had gone up through the Woolpack pub to the roof, they had vanished !

Went through my own hives nearby after that to see if they were mine, but all were present and correct.

Can't take another afternoon off work though.....

 

[djg]

And now another swarm reported in Bermondsey Street...LBKA advised, and I'll be there this afternoon. Curiouser and curiouser !

 

[bee ginnner]

Wouldn't it have been handy if there was something like a swarm collection map on the internet that this guy could have found about 5 beekeepers with a few miles of him?

yes that would be great,or you could type your postcode in the BBKA system and come up with some contacts and easily choose the nearest since they could tell you exactly how many miles away they were.I woudn,t recomend you put your contact details on there as people keep phoning you up(upto three a day) even when you have no more space to house them

 

[Andre cardona]

duz london not have a associations of beeks

 

[Polyanwood]

Swarm collected... more of a cast.

 

[BKF Admin]

Thanks for the update Polyanwood..

 

[Polyanwood]

Sorry for dealy. I went to the pub and only just got back.

 

[psafloyd]

Had a call from a bloke by the name of Derek who can be contacted on 07891602162.

Swarm is at 26 Southwark Street, Camberwell, London.

I took the call at 12:10pm today, swarm was noticed half hour ago.

I would love to have gone, but am in Kent today.

Boomer, I work on Southwark Bridge. Still, I didn't have any kit with me and I was wearing a whistle today. Still, I dare say I could have put a box over them and seen what happened.

 

[psafloyd]

Where are you in SE1' djg?

 

[PaleoPerson]

Amazing. entered SE1 in bbka website and it came up with 22 beeks within 10 miles.

 

[djg]

psafloyd,

I'm just south-west of Tower Bridge.

My younger son and I took a good-sized swarm (his first!) in Bermondsey Street on Friday afternoon at 5pm, then put it into a nuc around 9pm, when the fliers were back. Plenty of time to chat to passers-by on the merits of urban beekeeping. A couple of people said that they would post the event on YouTube...I'll provide a link if I can find one.

The swarm was from my second-favourite hive, Thames, which I had AS'd. I'm donating it to the LBKA to sell to a new, trained-up bee-keeper in South London. When I inspected yesterday, I found a couple of virgin Qs hemmed into their cells by the bees on an outer frame which I had missed - so there must have been 3 more QCs than I thought there were (one to swarm, two to stay). Mea culpa. So I pulled the other two, so now have a VC from a very placid and productive (but swarmy!) Q to put into a breeding nuc and one spare.

The really positive thing from a PR point of view was that 20,000 bees "went for a walk" on a busy London Street, with two rammed (Friday night!) pubs just 10 yards front and side to the swarm and no-one was stung, no traffic halted and universal support for bee-keeping was expressed by the locals who spoke to me.

I dotted the pubs and shops with some halfcomb sections to show what the bees normally got up to, when they were not on a mass excursion. Apparently, Southwark Council had been called by a troubled neighbour and the local businesses asked by an Environmental bod whether they had suffered any "nuisance". So far, I am not aware of any complaint, apart from my neighbour (search for "Insurance/Neighbours and Stings" thread on this forum for more on this, bless!), who called in the Council.

I will certainly be taking the VC in the breeding nuc to some friends who have a local breeding programme with a big drone-zone bred for non-swarmy characteristics. With my own imperfect bee-management exposed, I don't want to try people's patience with too many impromptu "Meet Your Local Bees" encounter groups, like Friday night !

 

[fredbloggs]

Great !

Good post and informative story!! And a happy ending!

Admin are you going to pull the contact details as you indicated?

Regards

FB

 

[richardbees]

poly

...."Sorry ..... I went to the pub and only just got back."

Yes, that happens to me too!!

imho the BBKA swarm postcode system works, particularly for London which is such a huge metropolis with zillions of unknown backyard beehives ... I collected a swarm last week because I was contacted by the caller as being closest (literally 10 minutes)

 

[djg]

As promised, here's a YouTube posting by a passer-by of me taking the swarm, while talking to the small crowd which had gathered. :

[ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0Xah4RnDko&sns=em[/ame]

I like the title: "25,000 bees in Bermondsey Street, Not 1 Person Stung and No Traffic Stopped...". .

Nice to translate the raised public awareness in the "plight of the honeybee" into a more intimate acquaintance of the bees - and the realisation that a swarm of bees is not something to be feared.

Urban beekeeping, bee-bore or street theatre ?

You decide...

 

[BKF Admin]

Great !

Good post and informative story!! And a happy ending!

Admin are you going to pull the contact details as you indicated?

Regards

FB

Thanks Fred for the heads up,I do have memory problems as a few on the forum will testify.
Details now removed.

 

[richardbees]

A masterful performance, DJG!

I'm glad you used a "vintage port" wine box - justifies why we have to charge what we do for a jar of honey!

richard