Got bees?

can help you out.

By day, he drives a satellite truck for a TV news organization. In his free time, he’s not only a beekeeper but he enjoys helping out homeowners with infestations, crawling under porches or climbing hundreds of feet in the air to take on swarms of stinging things.

Since we’re convinced you have to be crazy do to this kind of thing, we’re not going to spend any more time on introductions. We’ll let this Durham man tell you all about himself while we’re somewhere else clutching a can of Raid and whimpering.

How does one get into the bee business? I have had an interest in bees for quite a while. I read all I could get my hands on, but working a mid-day to late-evening shift, I never could take a class. Four years ago that changed and I took a basic beekeeping class offered through the University of Maine Cooperative Extension program. There are several around the state annually as well as some private classes offered by local beekeeping supply businesses and long-term beekeepers as well.

There are two main ways to get started with beekeeping. You can purchase a package of bees, which is a wood-framed box covered in window screen with about three pounds of bees, a queen bee in a queen cage, and a can of sugar syrup for them to feed on in transit from the south, usually Georgia. The other way is called a nuc or nucleus hive. A nuc . . . holds five frames with a mixture of honey, pollen and bees in various stages of life, from eggs, capped and uncapped brood and a laying queen. A package is available in Maine usually in late April to early May; a nuc is available a month or so later. . . . A package costs less, but has to be fed more, so you have to figure in the cost of sugar to make syrup, which evens it out pretty well. So the choice is a matter of personal preference. I started out with one of each.

A hive is made up of individual bees that form a “super organism” if you will. The queen is the most important bee in the hive; she spends her life laying eggs that all the other bees will come from. She also excretes pheromones that regulate all sorts of activities in the hive. Females are the workers, they take care of the queen, the brood, clean the hive, forage for food, regulate the temperature of the hive and, when necessary in the protection of the hive, sting, after which they die. Honeybees can only sting once. The males or drones only serve one purpose and that is to mate with virgin queens to allow the formation of a new colony of bees, and if they are successful in mating they die in the act. If not, they are shown the door of the colony when times get lean and or cold weather is coming.

How many times have you been stung?

Are you asking each time I work the bees or in total? Only joking a little. My sons have played in the area of the hives since we first acquired them and have only been stung once, and that happened in the house when a bee came inside with me on a frame of honey and then stung one of the boys on the back when it was trapped and didn’t have anywhere to escape.

There are beekeepers that work their bees for years without getting stung. They usually are wearing all the protective equipment that is available, and only have a hive or two. I started out that way, but didn’t like the restricting factors of the full bee suit, gloves, etc. Each person has to find their comfort level with gear and stings. I find that I can work the bees more gently without gloves, causing less aggravation to the bees, thus less inclination to sting.

I found the suit to be too hot for any amount of time, so unless the bees are testy I just go in with a veil. Sometimes not even that, but I am learning it is best to protect the eyes, I cannot imagine getting stung in the eye. I have been stung more times than I can remember, some of the more remembered ones were in the nose, ears and other facial stings. WEAR YOUR VEIL!

The worst single incident of stinging was a couple years ago when I was out on a partially cloudy day, which they aren’t keen on in the first place. I was holding a frame of bees up toward the sun so I could look at it with the light shining through to see better. I was stung in the armpit and dropped the frame — that’s hundreds of bees. They weren’t happy and started stinging. Then the rain started so I had to reassemble the hive and close it up before I walked away or there would have been major loss of bee life. I stopped counting at a couple dozen stings. No one to blame but myself.

I only had a topical reaction to a few of the stings. I usually just get a little bump, some itching and such for a while, then it’s all better. When I get anything in the face or more of a reaction, a shot of liquid benedryl fixes me right up. There are beekeepers that have more of a reaction and keep EPI pens with them at all times, or give up the bees.

Personally, mosquitoes and black flies cause more of a reaction and discomfort to me. Then I hope for a bee sting to mask the other bites. Yellow jackets, wasps, hornets and bumble bees can all sting more than once, are more apt to, and they HURT a lot more than a honeybee sting.

Does yelling “bread and butter!” at a bee make it go away?

Don’t I wish there was some magic words to stop them from pursuing. Seriously though, they will usually only sting to protect their hive, or if you have already been stung there is an alarm pheromone marker left by the first and subsequent stings that will cause others to sting there as well.

Your best course of action is to stay away from their hive. If you are being pursued by a bevy of bees, or even just one or two and you cannot get indoors, head to any close brushy areas or trees. Moving through them will usually disorient the pursuit. My lilac bush works great. If you do get stung, a little rubbing or isopropyl alcohol will remove the pheromone and take some of the itch away. Follow it up with a little ice. A little pain, swelling, itching is to be expected. If you have any puffiness in the lips, eyes or throat, some children’s liquid benedryl helps, as well as a trip to the ER if it causes any restriction to breathing. Your ride can always turn around if it gets better on the way. It is rare for anyone to die from a bee sting, we don’t have Africanized honeybees in Maine as they cannot survive the winters

What do you do with the winged freaks once you get the hive removed?

If someone has bees “bugging” them, first and foremost is identification. Are they indeed honeybees or are they yellow jackets, wasps or hornets. If you see a paper or mud “hive” it is not honeybees; a call to a pest control company is in order.

If it is honeybees and they are living in the walls, ceiling or other part of a structure, you don’t want to use any sort of poison on them. You won’t kill the entire hive and you will just make them agitated, causing them to start stinging.

Even if you managed to kill all of the ones that were coming and going, resulting in the hive going into decline and dying out in your structure, you would be left with the wax, honey and brood still in it. Without the collective bees regulating the temperature in the hive, the wax would melt, honey would run all over the place and the brood would rot, causing a terrible smell. The honey would attract other bees to rob it out, as well as ants and other pests.

Your best bet is what is called a “cut-out.” That is where a beekeeper comes and cuts open the structure with as minimal an intrusion as is possible, and removes the comb containing the honey, brood, and most of the bees, hopefully including the queen. The beekeeper then places them into a bucket, box or hive to resettle them elsewhere.

The field bees who are out collecting nectar and pollen at the time will return looking for their home and can be collected through the use of a “bee vac,” which gently collects them into another container to be added back to the rest of the bees later.

If the location is such that the queen can be restricted to the new hive box, and it can be placed directly in front of the old entrance to their old hive, the bees will return to it instead and it can be closed up after dark and removed with almost all the bees being captured for relocation.

The cavity in the structure is then filled with fiberglass or spray foam so that there is nowhere for . . . new bees to take up residence. The homeowner then has a contractor repair any damage done during the removal process. Some beekeepers will do strictly removals, others will do the repair work as well.

Swarms on the other hand are bees that have split off from their old hive and gone house hunting. They will usually . . . alight on a branch, bush, building or some such thing in a large, writhing mass of bees, causing hysteria with the general public. This is bees at their most gentle.

They gorge on honey before leaving, as they don’t know how soon they will find new digs, as well as the need to make more wax when they decide on a new place. When bees are full of honey they can’t bend enough to sting. As mentioned earlier, they sting to protect their hive, which they don’t have when they are a swarm. So they are not likely to sting as long as they haven’t been there long.

If they are there a few days, all bets are off, as they will have started to build the hive right where they are. . . . Most of the time if a swarm is easy picking, swarm retrieval is free. If there are ladders, boom trucks, etc., involved, an agreement is reached ahead of time, just like in a cut-out.

Once back to the apiary, the bees are placed into a standard hive setup, fed some sugar syrup, and most times all is done. The beekeeper now has another colony of bees who are hopefully healthy and productive.

If you have a swarm you can fill out a form at: mainebeekeepers.org

Or call the swarm hotline at: (207) 619-4BEE