Some of my longer term readers may remember that I had bees in my chimney stack. This had turned into a tricky problem, with quotes of £4,000+ to remove them and reseal the chimney. It wasn’t even my fault (honestly!!) as when the swarm first moved in my own bees were based around four miles away. The bees just found me.
Well, I found a solution! I joined a Facebook group called UK Bee Removers. Where I then noticed a lady called Molly from Bees Off based in Cornwall. I’m so pleased to have found someone local, who could do the whole job for us. She organized all the scaffolding and rehomed the bees in her own apiary based in central Cornwall. She then resealed the tiny crack in the chimney stack where the bees had got in, so that it won’t happen again.
She’s also got a cracking sense of humor and is very patient with all Tommy’s (many!) questions – “Why do you have a ladder?” “What are you doing up there?” “Where are the bees going?”. She showed him how he glowed red with her heat sensor, which she uses to determine exactly where the bees are in the chimney. She also uses a special honey bee vacuum, putting the sucked up bees back onto their comb (rubber banded into frames in a nuc) part way through.
She said this was a whopper of a colony with combs hanging down around four feet, they’d been really thriving there! Was a shame to kick them out in a way but I did want to use my fire again!
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