11 October 2019
There was great excitement last week, when a team came to re-home the small swarm of honey bees that had been resident behind the weatherboards in our school hall roof-void since late last spring. They had not been bothering us unduly over the warmer months, but as the weather got cooler, they were becoming increasingly angry when agitated by any nearby noise and vibration.
The team had to erect a scaffold in the library courtyard to reach the weatherboards which, when prised off, revealed a whole row of honeycombs, all vertically stacked in the void. The bees were gradually sucked into a special box to transport them to their new homes in a local apiary, and the honeycombs removed – the wax structures were dripping with honey!
Many of the boys came to look, and the beekeepers showed them the special box and talked to us about bees. If you put your hand near (but not on) the grille you could feel the heat coming off the buzzing bees inside.
The rain set in, disrupting the remove, but they had managed to remove hundreds of bees including the queen, so those remaining would ‘buzz off’ back to where they came from. By Monday, they were all gone.
