The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Bees & Beekeeping => Topic started by: Bionic on June 12, 2015, 02:24:44 pm
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OH is a member of the local bee keepers club and was secretary last year which meant his name and phone number has been published in various places.
We are getting a fair number of calls from people who have swarms and want us to come and deal with them. He takes the calls if he is here but often its me dealing with it.
Usually it seems the swarms are in places very difficult to get at and way beyond what a bee keeper can do. Last week one lady informed me that we would have to take off several roof tiles to get to the swarm whilst another told me they were behind the fascia on her house and a third that they were up the chimney. They mostly come to us because the local council don't have the facilities to deal with this sort of thing these days. It also seems that pest control, even if you are paying, don't want to know.
Whats the answer?
Yesterday afternoon OH did go out on a call where the swarm was in a hedge and the farmer needed to bring his cows in past the swarm. Swarm was collected and everyone was happy.
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If you want to some make mad money during the swarming season and from when feral nests have caused damage etc, give me a Pm & your address + phone numbers & I'll come over & talk with you both of how I handled such things .
It was worth around two thousand pounds to me each year 20 years ago which apparently now equates to around £8 K..
Not paying before work starts means they keep the bees .. I could grow enough of my own quality bees . By the time I'd treated a feral capture & set it up in a hive I was already going to be out of pocket for at least two years.
Some jobs were exceedingly well rewarded when I had to take brick work out to remove an established nest in thick or cavity walls .
One place was an old folks retirement home where wasps had over wintered for several years making for a massive nest system that filled 15 large heavy duty black rubble sacks.
The wasps had chewed out most of the roof truss timbers , leaving roof slates sitting on 1/4 inch thick wood and leaving plasterboard nails poking up through the ceiling boards almost free of any timbers. i had to make a full floor plan system of scaffold and planks to support the plaster board ceilings & myself before I could get to work in the roof void .
Ssome feral bees nests had to be live steam cleaned by me after the main nest removal to take out the scents & flavours of honey bees on wild comb to stop them reoccupying the cavities as well as having to get the access pints blocked off. I often also placed several strips of organo phosphate insecticide in the cleaned out cavity to keep them from further attempts at nest making , as well as putting a vent brick low down in bricked off chimneys and putting a bee resistant breathable cap on the chimney so that the chimney wouldn't sweat once any residual honey left in the chimneys started to go hygroscopic and take in lots of water ..