For help with removing a swarm on your property, please contact one of the following:
Scott Flynn (Washington/Riverside/Kalona/Iowa City)
Golden Hills Apiary
515-238-4028
Shaun Webb (Iowa City/Coralville/Kalona)
319-321-1414
Joseph Klingelhutz (Iowa City area)
Drew Erickson (Cedar Rapids/ Marion)
970-227-2548
Amber Fraser
Dave Irvin (Iowa City area)
319-331-6590
Robert Blount (Iowa City/Coralville/North Liberty)
cell: 415-297-8005
home: 319-499-1295
Thomas Long
Iowa City/West Branch/West Liberty/Tipton
cell: 218-404-5738
For help with honey bees located in a structure (dog house, under the deck, chicken coop etc.) the following may be called to remove bees:
Amber Fraser amberemiller@gmail.com
Phone 319-530-4859 (text preferred)
If you are interested in being on the swarm removal list, please send your contact information to davisjk@southslope.net (Jim Davis) or comment below. Thanks.
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The following note about honey bee swarms was written by Dave Campbell, former secretary of ECIBA.
GOT BEE SWARMS?
In summer, I
often get calls from folks with swarms of bees on their property, asking if one
of our beekeepers will come get them.
Here is what I tell them:
First, are
you sure you really have honey bees?
True, this seems a pretty stupid question to ask, but there are folks
who mistake bumblebees or yellowjackets, or even wasps and hornets, for real
honeybees. Wasps and hornets have narrow
waists, whereas bumblebees and jellowjackets live in nests in the ground and
are the wrong size (too large and too small, respectively). Anyway, if you truly have a swarm (a clump of
bees clustered on a post or tree limb), they are almost certainly real honey
bees, the kind our beekeepers will want.
Next, do you
need someone to simply catch a swarm (like the clump clustered on your bush),
or remove a bee nest that is in place?
If there is a swarm to catch, your time is limited. You likely have only a day or two. That swarm is just marking time, continually sending
out scouts to locate a good place to move into, such as a hollow tree. Once they find one, the swarm will be gone,
off to live in the new place they have found.
The beecatcher must get there and entice them into his/her bee box
(hive) before that happens. He/she will
try to find the queen bee and move her into the hive: once the queen settles
there, the rest of her cluster will come in with her. The beekeeper can then take the box full of
new-caught bees away.
How can you
find a beekeeper? Your county extension
service or master gardeners group may be able to give you leads. There are about a dozen beekeeper’s clubs
scattered around Iowa; your nearest one may be able to help. Find their contacts through the Iowa Honey
Producer’s Association, www.ABuzzAboutBees.com. Finally, most Iowa apiaries register their
locations with the IDALS Sensitive Crop Directory. Iowa Administrative Code Chapter 21-45.31(2)
prohibits a pesticide applicator from spraying pesticides that are toxic to
bees between 8:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. on any blooming crops located within one
mile of a registered apiary. The website at BeeCheck.org
has maps
that make it easy for the applicator to locate nearby registered apiaries. But you can use it to find a local beekeeper
who might want your swarm.
Whether the
beekeeper will be interested in putting in the effort to catch your swarm will
depend on the time of year. An old
jingle says this:
A swarm of bees in May is worth
a load of hay.
A swarm of bees in June is worth
a silver spoon.
A swarm of bees in July in not
worth a fly!
The reason
we keep bees is so they will make surplus honey the beekeeper can sell or
use. The May and June swarms will have
plenty of time to produce surpluses, so are valuable to the beekeeper. The July swarm will likely not make a surplus
this year, but may well store enough honey to bring the colony through the
winter, so (assuming it survives the cold) will be of value next year. A swarm caught in August or later will
probably have to be fed (sugar water, say) to bring its stores up to get it
through the winter, so it represents an iffy proposition—the beekeeper will
have to go to the effort to both catch and feed it, with no sure guarantee of
success. Result: as the season goes on,
any beekeeper you contact will be progressively less enthusiastic about
catching the swarm that clustered on your bush.
What if you
don’t have a temporary cluster of new bees, but an established nest of them
living somewhere you don’t want? Your
problem has now changed; you don’t want a “swarm catcher”, you want a “bee
removal”. Are you kind-hearted, and want
to “save” the bees? Bee removal/recovery
often involves carpentry work; cutting down a bee tree, say, or removing siding
or soffits of a building to get at the bees.
This is going to cost you money—you need a beekeeper/carpenter,
preferably someone bonded to do the work, who will both remove the bees and
repair your structure after the bees are gone.
Are you not particularly kind-hearted, but just want to get rid of the
bees? Depending on the situation, there
may be other options, such as hiring a regular insect exterminator to just kill
the bees in place. My general advice to
folks who want bees removed is to leave them alone unless they are causing
serious problems. It is quite possible
that the nest will winter-kill, especially if it took up residence during
August or later. If the bees are not
evident come spring, your problem will have solved itself, and with no effort or
expense on your part! (However, be sure
to plug the access hole(s) to keep yet another swarm from taking up residence
in the old nest.)
==Dave
Campbell, former Secretary of East Central Iowa Beekeepers Association
HONEY BEE REMOVAL SERVICE
ReplyDeleteComments: If bees have made your home their home or if you have a swarm, please call us to have them humanely removed, rescued and relocated. We’re willing to go wherever we’re needed and no job is to big.
Shane Bixby
Iowa Honey Producers Association District 2 Director
Cedar Rapids, IA
Phone: 319-721-3493
Email: honeybeeclasses@gmail.com
Website: Beeapartbeetogether.com
Informative post! I really like to read this, it shares lots of information about bees.
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