Bee Saga: Chapter III - The Bee-Man Cometh....

If you missed the earlier posts, I suggest you start here: Bee Saga: Chapter I.

So, where we last left-off, I had written my Blog-Buddy Finnyknits, a new-ish beekeeper (and therefore "Living Breathing Expert On All Things Bee-Related"), asking for advice about "What to do" about the hive that had returned to the Monster-Tree, out front. Finny advised contacting a beekeeper on the "Swarms" list at the Santa Clara Beekeeper's Guild.

So I went to the site, and scrolled thru the page, trying to find someone who serviced our area...

Picked up my cell-phone, dialed a number, and lo' and behold! someone actually ANSWERED!!!

"Hi, is this so-and-so?"

"Yes, it is."

"Hi, so-and-so, my name is QT (okay, no, not really - but whatEVAR!!!) and I found you thru the Beekeeper's Guild. I have a swarm of bees. Can you help me?"

Blah-dee-blah, yada-yada. Gave him a description of what I could see. "About 10-12 feet off the ground..." "Yeah, here's my address...." And "You'll be here in an HOUR?! Really?!!"

Wow.

Sure as sh*t. He was here in an hour!

He even brought a Beekeeping "Apprentice" along. Wow!!!

Welllllll.... Long story short.... Apparently I used the wrong nomenclature in the Beekeeping World (Ooooops!)

Now where I thought that a "Swarm of Bees" was kinda like a "Gaggle of Geese" or a "Pride of Lions" or "Pack of Coyotes" (or whatever of whatevers!)... Apparently that was WRONG!

It seems that a "swarm," more-specifically, is referring to a large quantity of bees that is "on the move." My bees, clearly established in the tree, were NOT "on the move."

And I learned that they... Well, they not only lived in the tree (like, in a hive built in the tree). They actually lived IN the tree (like, INSIDE of the tree), so it's not like somebody could just grab the hive and take it. They would need to be "trapped" and he wasn't a "Bee-Trapper."

Well, sh*t!

So I apologized for not using the correct terminology explaining that "Well, I'm not an apiarist! I honestly didn't know and I'm sorry for taking your time. But I greatly appreciate you coming out!"

He was cool with that, actually. (I really did feel bad - but how could I know, right???)

Anyway, I did ask him "Well who CAN help me?" and he said I should go back to the Bee-Guild site and look for Bee-Trappers.

So I got a bit of an internal "chuckle" over the whole visual of a "Bee-Trapper" wearing a bee-veil over a coonskin cap, as I surfed thru the Bee Guild Website. Then I started clicking on the (minimal) links for "more advanced" bee-removal/bee-trappers, I saw that it was gonna cost something like $500.00-1000.00 to have bees removed from a tree (Holy sh*t!), and suddenly all of the "humor" vanished!!!

Ohhhh sh*t!!!

And I began to wonder: "Is this something I can do myself????"

Next...