202 - Moyer - Getting Bees Out of the Walls

[00:00:00] Andony Melathopoulos: If you're a beekeeper, you always get a call sometime in the summer about somebody who's had a swarm, that's landed on a Bush and wondering if you'd come remove it. Now as a beekeeper here in Oregon, you will have added your name to the Oregon state beekeepers association swarm list. And then you'll get calls and actually catching swarms is really easy.

[00:00:18] You can increase your colonies this way, and it's a great service to provide back to the public. Now, occasionally you get a call from somebody who says. I've got bees in a compost bin, or I've got bees in a wall or in a crawl space. And those are very complicated. Now I know recently there's a viral video about a beekeeper in Austin, Texas who removes B colonies from spaces almost effortlessly wearing no gear.

[00:00:45] And I just am here to tell you that's a little bit more complicated than YouTube. So to get the real deal on what's involved with getting bees at a tricky space is I reached out to Charlie Moyer. Now Charlie is the vice president with Douglas county bees, which is, I think the only bee club here in Oregon that offers as a service to the public, getting bees out of walls and crawl spaces and so forth.

[00:01:07] Charlie's also a district Forester with roses. Forest products. And that's how I know him because together we're in this program called real Oregon, the resource education and agricultural leadership program. We were in the third class were classmates together in Newport, Oregon, where we're learning about some of the challenges with managing commercial fisheries.

[00:01:27] Anyways, we stole a few minutes away at one of the breaks to talk about beekeeping. And so on this episode, getting bees at a tricky places with Charlie Moyer this week on pollination. We are in new

[00:01:40] Charley Moyer: port for a reason, correct? Yeah. We're in Newport for a real Oregon, which is a resources education agriculture leadership program.

[00:01:49] Andony Melathopoulos: And it's been great. This is our third session. So we were part of this really vibrant group of ag and natural resource professionals.

[00:01:57] Charley Moyer: Yeah, having a good time all across Oregon. And our next session is up in Salem, which is going to be fun. Getting to more introduction into the legislature, today we're going to have a little chat about B's correct.

[00:02:07] Going to have a chat about

[00:02:08] Andony Melathopoulos: bees and new port. We've been seeing like the wonderful ag resource sector here. There's the fisheries. And we've seen, really remarkable. Remarkable ways in which people are, making sure everything works. And this has been w the

[00:02:23] Charley Moyer: session before we were a Roseburg, correct?

[00:02:25] My hometown,

[00:02:26] Andony Melathopoulos: your hometown, where you're also vice-president of the Douglas county beekeepers

[00:02:30] Charley Moyer: association. That's correct. Been vice-president just a few months because. Our current past president passed away and, or current vice-president passed away. And they asked me to step up and help out with that.

[00:02:42] I've been a beekeeper for just over two years. Mostly doing top bar hives, but with the Douglas county bees, we do swarm calls. If people see swarms that are near their property or near the businesses, they'll give us a call and we'll come out. Try and get them recaptured and rehomed into into hive somewhere or in other cases that people have either a residential house or a business where.

[00:03:04] Bees have colonized and we'll help do a free removal on them if sometimes with their help. So now

[00:03:11] Andony Melathopoulos: that's the remarkable thing. Cause mostly anybody knows. If you have a swarm, you can go to the OSBA swarm list and there's a list of names. There are people to call on being a beekeeper will show up and collect the swarms.

[00:03:23] That the thing that I hadn't really heard about, and it seems that you and Douglas county are a real pro. Is removing be colleagues when they move into a space. And just for our listeners who don't know much about bee biology, why are, why would you find a honeybee colony in a structure?

[00:03:39] Charley Moyer: So in a structure there they're looking for.

[00:03:41] Space so that they are protected from the environment. Some were nice and warm where they can build their comb and readily accessible to, the natural resources, the pollination centers around the area. And some of these, I

[00:03:53] Andony Melathopoulos: think I believe there it's mimicking in nature they would go into a tree cavity and

[00:03:59] Charley Moyer: they don't know it's a crawl space.

[00:04:00] We actually did do a removal from a tree cavity. Somebody was rehabbing their yard and it was in the truck. But we've had crawl spaces in walls of building in soffits of buildings. We've had one business actually two businesses where they were in the walls. One was 24 feet up in the air.

[00:04:17] We've got Our community. We have volunteers that donate some materials and allow us to use scaffolding or in situations where, it's a business and they've got they've got other facilities available, we'll take a scissor lift or some kind of lift to get us a little closer to the bees.

[00:04:32] So it's not as dangerous.

[00:04:33] Andony Melathopoulos: Okay, so this is a, this is, I w we had this conversation before we came into the session, getting a swarm can be, it's on a Busch, shake it into a box and move away. This is much more involved in, you talked about scissor lifts and scaffolds. I imagine you have to get the bees are coming in through a little hole and you can't get the colony out to that little hole.

[00:04:52] Correct.

[00:04:52] Charley Moyer: So a big part of this is, we have our president of our organization of Douglas county. B's, he'll go out and scope the area and come up with a plan and then we'll have our cutout team. And it's Douglas county B's is about 60 plus members. And we'll do a call out of Hey, we need some help on this.

[00:05:10] And. Those that are interested and we have actually a cutout list of folks that want to receive those bees. So they have all their gear ready and there'll be part of the team that comes in that will break into the the existing hive. That's in the building. And then pull the bees out, pull the honey comb out, pull the other debris that's out of there.

[00:05:29] And we try to replace what we can on there. Like golfing where we replace our divots.

[00:05:33] Andony Melathopoulos: I can imagine as well that, as soon as you use any equipment on a wall or a surface, your needs, a cutaway. B's get agitated. That's just an

[00:05:42] Charley Moyer: inevitability of it.

[00:05:43] Correct. And we've tried to do just due to the nature of our group. We tried to do these on the weekends and sometimes they start stacking up because you really can only do this in April through June at the latest We try to get their pre-dawn so that the bees aren't out scouting and bringing pollination, pollen back in.

[00:06:02] But first thing we try to do when we get there is block their opening and then dig into whatever structure it is to do it. And it might be that we're bringing in. Power tools or taking off siding off a building or removing soffits or other things on the building to get in there.

[00:06:19] And unfortunately there's some instances where we can't get them. What we thought was a easily accessible area. It just doesn't work. And unfortunately we can't get, we can't save every B, but we.

[00:06:29] Andony Melathopoulos: Okay. So let's just say you were able to get the siding off or whatever off, and you've got the colony, expose there.

[00:06:37] So what's the how do the bees are all flying around. They're all agitated. Like how do you get the bees and the code? Out, because I imagine some of these spaces are really like the beads don't make it like in a box. Like you've got home comb, it's like down a very narrow space or something.

[00:06:52] Sure.

[00:06:53] Charley Moyer: I'm a good example was we had bees that were in between the floorboards from the first floor to the second floor. And think thinking of a two by eight structure and the bees had. Curve there comb around so that, you've got a seven inch tall comb, but that comb could extend two feet into the building.

[00:07:13] So it's it's healing and onion. You peel one layer back at a time and we use a B vacuum. A shop back or sometime subtype of a machine that can gently pull the bees off of the comb and into the vacuum chamber. They're safe and that must be

[00:07:30] Andony Melathopoulos: tricky.

[00:07:31] It is very tricky. Getting

[00:07:33] Charley Moyer: Them without damaging them and without damaging the comb too much. And the nice thing is once you get the queen in there I'm very poor at finding the queen. But the easiest part is that the. Once the queen is in that vacuum or in that chamber, a lot of the bees want to follow it.

[00:07:47] And you can tell by the actions of the bees that, oh, we got the queen in there now they're all gonna, they're all gonna want to follow. So it's a very easy. Just keep working at it. And by the time we've cleared out an area, we may be down to 50 or a hundred bees flying in the air. Okay. And so

[00:08:05] Andony Melathopoulos: you take the coma, but I imagine, for co the comas kind of crazy comb, correct.

[00:08:11] It doesn't fit, it doesn't fit regular equipment. So how do you,

[00:08:15] Charley Moyer: yeah so we have a whole nother T we have, the team that's with the vacuum and cutting the comb, and then we have another team on the ground, the ground crew and. As, as I'm cutting the comb, I'm putting into a cookie tray and transporting it to the ground and then they'll take it from the cookie tray.

[00:08:28] We have to make sure we have the right orientation, up is up and we'll put it into a frame with rubber bands and then just stack it into an existing box that, that the person who's receiving the bees that's their equipment. And they're ready to go. So we'll follow them home. Or give them the box the chamber that has got the bees from the vacuum.

[00:08:51] And then they brought the box with their frames that are now filled with men. You're making them fit. Yeah, unfortunately, yeah. We're trying to make them fit. We're always looking for brood. We're always looking for cap tiny, but then we have a lot of waste as well. And we'll take, we try and take care of that all because the homeowner is just I didn't want to kill these bees, but I really don't want them coming back.

[00:09:11] That must

[00:09:12] Andony Melathopoulos: be the thing is that I get that a lot people they're like I've got bees in a tricky place. I know bees are in trouble. I want to protect them, but can you help me? That's probably the first

[00:09:20] Charley Moyer: conversation you have. And some of these it's, we try our hardest Adam. Unfortunately, there's a handful of them that just don't work.

[00:09:26] The space is inaccessible or the bees are just they, weren't where we thought they were. We'll use a thermal cameras to pinpoint where the bees are and then I'll be darned and then start digging into the outside of the house or in some cases, the inside of the house. Go after the bees.

[00:09:42] Andony Melathopoulos: Okay. So now you've got the bees in the box. Do you leave it there overnight to try and attract any foragers that are still?

[00:09:48] Charley Moyer: No. Our hope is that we got most of them right then, and then we moved them away. We want to get them to their new home before the heat builds up. And we're transporting these bees and we've had instances where they get overheated and we could lose an entire colony fairly easily.

[00:10:04] Andony Melathopoulos: Okay. How many of these have Douglas county bees beekeepers

[00:10:08] Charley Moyer: done? In this last year we did an access. 20 really? Yes, that's amazing. And I was part of about 10 of them. So I do work full-time at Roseburg forest products as a Forester I try to help out as much as I can. One this past year was actually on our, one of our mill sites down in riddle.

[00:10:27] He was actually. In a wall behind some electrical equipment. So it was there, their instance was, they saw some bees flying around, but they actually had honey dripping out of the walls and they were like, Hey, it's really great, but we need to move the bees out of here.

[00:10:41] Andony Melathopoulos: What was the most kind of challenging one that you can

[00:10:44] Charley Moyer: remember?

[00:10:45] One of the most challenging ones was it was a soffit in a log cabin. So is the roof soffit and we're already. 12 to 15 feet up in the air and cutting into the soffit and the B you get some gentle bees that are not a problem, but this high was, as soon as I got it open, they went all over me.

[00:11:04] The other beekeeper that was helping me he had to abandon it because he was getting stung. I was getting stung. At the end of that day, I wound up with over 50 hits. Thankfully I have not had the allergic reactions yet. We keep watching that. We make sure that we have EpiPens available.

[00:11:20] I guess watch out for each

[00:11:21] Andony Melathopoulos: other. I think the planning process that you talked at the beginning seems so important because you are, you may be quite a ways off the ground and getting stung and distracted and like safety issues. Correct. Really important.

[00:11:32] Charley Moyer: And it's a lot of making sure of your foot placement and making sure that, you're not kicking a tool off onto somebody down below you and or that you're working at the pace for the PA for the grand crew as well, so that they can get the comb free of B.

[00:11:47] Into the frames and into their box so that you know that they're not having to fight the bees at the same time, too. How many

[00:11:53] Andony Melathopoulos: teams do you usually feel?

[00:11:54] Charley Moyer: We've usually field. Four to six people is a small side. We've had upwards of a dozen because we've had, local contractors that are masons that are on, in bulk involved and we've taken down chip, portions of chimneys on houses and gone after being, comb and bees.

[00:12:10] So the

[00:12:11] Andony Melathopoulos: last question I have for you, because I see people filtering in. Is I imagine a lot of B being clubs are interested in getting involved in doing this so that the calls happen. And I guess we've got a good resource now called Douglas county, but what you get the call? What kind of questions you ask?

[00:12:28] Cause I imagine many times they're a bumblebee or they're lost then how do you, what kind of questions do you ask somebody right at the front end to figure out, the. What's involved here.

[00:12:37] Charley Moyer: Thankfully a lot of people have smartphones, so they're able to take a picture of what they see and hopefully we can identify it, where are they have high off the ground?

[00:12:45] Might they be how long have they been there? We've gotten instances. Oh yeah. They just arrived. And we'll see that fresh white comb as we're removing the bees. In other cases, they're like, we don't know, it could have been several years that we've gotten. B's at have been four or five years in the same area.

[00:13:01] So I'm somewhat of the construction of the building to give us a hint of what tools are giving me a need to be involved.

[00:13:10] Andony Melathopoulos: Just one last one last question is do the having bees in your structures, do they cause damage?

[00:13:18] Charley Moyer: In some cases they will cause a damage that they're compressing.

[00:13:21] They're compressing the insulation there. They're moving around the wiring and things like that. If you have somebody in your house that's allergic, they may, occasionally come into the house. It's a concern for people.

[00:13:32] Andony Melathopoulos: So are there instances where you might say, oh, they'll just lean it

[00:13:36] Charley Moyer: in some cases, if it's an abandoned house and they're not going to do anything with it, why mess with it?

[00:13:41] But in other cases they wanted to sell the house or they wanted to do improvements to the house. Okay. These bees are just in the way or they're doing some other activity that would harm the bees. So they, they need to move on.

[00:13:53] Andony Melathopoulos: I hear Tootsie rolls have

[00:13:54] Charley Moyer: arrived so well, darn it, sugar.

[00:13:57] Thank you so much.

[00:13:58] Andony Melathopoulos: It's a really, it's really amazing that the beekeeping association has taken this on. I think this is a real model for the state and for listeners in B clubs across the country for pulling this together. All right.

[00:14:09] Charley Moyer: Thank you very much. And you're welcome.