Saving the honey bee in Texas

When I was growing up, I went to Scotland to visit my Grandparents in the summers. My Grandfather taught me all about beekeeping, he had ten hives. Swarming was always an issue in the spring, but in the tight knit community where they lived, everyone knew him as the beekeeper. The neighbors would call him when swarms would gather in their trees. We would go on wild goose chases following the cloud of bees around until it finally settled somewhere. Of course I was given the clippers and sent up the tree to fetch the swarm, my Grandfather or Ga, as we called him was too old to climb up the trees.
We would have a box ready to put the bee cluster in, and I would bring the swarm down from the tree gently and place them in the box (most times). We would then wait until sundown when they had settled into their makeshift home for the evening. We would bring them back to the house, and in the morning we would place a large board in front of an empty hive and shake the bees onto the board. There were thousands of them. They would calmly crawl into the empty hive and settle in to their new home. It was an amazing thing to witness. My Ga wouldn’t wear much protection, as the stings were good for his arthritis. So, as a result, most of the time I also did this in a T-shirt and shorts, with just a veil on sometimes!

I got my first beehive in Texas from listing my name with a local pest control company who didn’t want to exterminate honeybees. I had it growing up at my parent’s house through junior high and high school.

I have returned to Texas now and have a wonderful family, living in Dallas again. We have bought a house and so finally I was ready to start up beekeeping again. I registered with the county to collect swarms, and with the local pest control companies. After a very short time I was getting a dozen calls a week to collect bees.

Mostly the calls were difficult situations where the bees had been established for many years and people simply wanted them removed. This poses a different challenge from swarm collecting, as an established hive is much more aggresive about defending it's home.

I realize that I cannot save all the honeybees I encounter in these situations, as many of them venture in between the walls of%

Swarm from the tank of bees landed on the concrete slab in the backyard

The tank of bees, still going strong.

Huge colony in tree in Addison, Texas

I got a recent call from a car dealership in Addison with this colony in a tree behind their lot. It was the biggest most grandiose colony I have seen in the wild. I managed to saw the branch off while at the top of a very precarious ladder with the hive body balanced underneath. The colony fell perfectly into the hive, but then the ladder promptly fell over. The bees exploded into the air, thier colony in pieces on the ground. Instantly I was sad, feeling I had destroyed the most beautiful colony I have seen. But knowing that they would have perished with pesticides if I didn’t finish the job, I gently placed the comb back into the box, and left it there for the night. When I returned early the next morning, all of the bees were inside the hive body, happily fixing up the comb in the hive. They survived the winter well, and they have now moved into the frames where they are storing honey and the queen is laying eggs.

This was at a schoolyard outside of dallas. The bees had been there for a few years. This colony is the strongest of all my removed colonies so far.