Bee Hive Removal Santa Barbara

This was a live bee hive removal.  The hive was the width of the studs and 8 feet high.  Pretty impressive!

Bee Hive Removal Santa Barbara

Live bee removal.  This bee hive had taken up residence in an irrigation box at a home in Hope Ranch.

Bee Swarm on Palm Frond- Santa Barbara

This was a huge swarm which was in my buddies yard.  He had multiple hives, one of which swarmed... and was unavailable to come get his own bees.  I gladly helped out.  This was the biggest swarm of the season for me.  Notice the gentleman on the other side of the fence.  He helped hold the box while I used big loppers to cut the frond free and place it in a box.  This was at least 3x the size of the normal copy paper box that I use to catch swarms.  I placed this swarm in a Top Bar Hive and in less than a month more than 20 bars had drawn comb... unfortunately some of it was crossed and I had to make some adjustments... (please forgive the terrible photo quality - I usually snap these with my cell phone, not a real camera).

Feral (Natural) Hive - Olive Tree

This was an established feral hive - fully exposed under the canopy of an olive tree.  It was quite large and the comb was drawn out in large, long sheets.  It was a difficult re-hive project since all the comb had sticks protruding from every possible angle.  It was tough to free up pieces to hang on the frames.  It's a bit tough to pick out the detail in the photo, but at this point it was essentially a large mass of comb and sticks.

Bee Hive Removal Santa Barbara

Bee hive removal. I was asked to take a look at a hive by the property owner where I keep several hives.  The bees were pestering/stinging several of the guys when they walked near the chain link fence on a utility road at the back of the property.   This was located in a wood pile (old sign posts) on an old farm property that looked more like a dumping area than farm area.  This hive was very agitated and defended their area aggressively.    Could have been several factors, one of which was this was late summer and water/food could have been scarce.

Sign Post was approx. 3 feet wide at top

I didn't try to rehive this particular  colony.  They were less than 200 yards from my apiary and I was concerned about mixing genetics.  I collected all the honey comb and ended up putting the rest of the comb in bags... sorry to have to do it, but the hive was too close to road space and greenhouse.  It just wasn't the right colony in the right place.

Bee Specifics -