Bees don’t only live in walls and roofs. Sometimes they’re right under your feet. On a property in the north of Johannesburg, landscapers redoing an entrance path found a huge colony of Apis mellifera scutellata (the African honeybee) living inside a fibre cement curbstone. They needed the bees gone, so we came out at night to vacuum and relocate the nest.

Why We Use Red Light

For night removals with this species, we always switch to red headlamps. Bees can’t easily see red light, so it helps keep them calmer. As it turned out, this colony was already on edge.

Angry Bees from the Start

The plan was to gently lift the curb, but it was wedged tight. While we were trying to wiggle it loose with a pickaxe, the side cracked, and the guard bees poured out.

Luckily the bee vac was already running. A bee got inside the veil, so we stepped back and double-checked the zip before carrying on. We don’t usually like to use smoke, but this colony was clearly unhappy, so a little smoke helped settle things.

Exposing the Nest

When we finally lifted the stone, we found a beautiful, fresh nest. We could tell it was fairly new from the colour of the wax: new wax is pale, and old wax turns black. Bees use most of the nectar they collect to make wax, so a nest full of fresh comb means a colony that has been working hard.

Part of the comb was drone brood, which is where the male bees are raised. You can spot it by the cells, which are noticeably larger than normal worker cells.

How many bees were there? It’s hard to be certain, but judging by the volume in the catch box and the amount of comb, there were easily tens of thousands.

Interestingly, once the nest is fully opened up, the bees often become less aggressive.

Framing the Comb

The next step is to transfer the comb into frames so the colony can carry on in its new home:

• Keep the orientation: The comb goes in the same way up as it was in the nest, so it feels familiar to the bees.
• Centre it: If the comb sits off-centre, the bees build across the frames and join them together, and then you can’t get them out.
• Secure it: We trim the top straight, hold the comb in place with elastic bands, and cut a small slit where the frame wires sit so the comb doesn’t slide to the bottom of the box.

Any comb that isn’t used isn’t wasted. The honey is recycled, and the rest of the wax is rendered down into wax sheets.

Pro Tip: Putting bees back onto their own comb is the best way to get them to stay. Their pheromones are all over it, and they can smell where their queen has been.

Why Removals Aren’t Free

People sometimes ask us to do removals for free because “you get the bees.” But the bees choose whether to stay, and some fly off anyway. Even when they do stay, it takes about a year before a colony like this produces honey we can harvest.

A Bigger Home

The colony turned out to be bigger than expected, so the six-frame box we brought was a tight fit. We took them back to our nursery apiary and moved them into a ten-frame box with room to build.

Found bees under a paving stone, curb, or garden feature? Don’t try to dig them out yourself. Get in touch with Bee Sanctuary, and we’ll relocate them safely and humanely.