Thousands of bees move into (Texas) Prosper neighborhood

[flashl]

PROSPER – A Collin County neighborhood is buzzing with frustration since thousands of bees have made a home out of a vacant house.

Neighbors say it's taking too long to remove what they consider to be a hazard to themselves and their children.

...

The bees have already attacked. A landscaping crew hired by the city to mow the vacant home's lawn became the bees' targets.

...

While Prosper's code enforcement officer sent a letter to the owner of the vacant house requiring her to have the bees and hives removed by July 4, she never responded. Now, the city will hire a pest control company to remove the bees at the owner's expense.

Dallas News

[jpcrecom]

1. Are these the killer bees from the 80s?

I've been afraid of them for like 20 years.

[XemaSab]

2. They're AFRICANIZED!

:o

[1monster]

6. Killer bees attack en masse. The landscaper guy escaped with six or seven stings. Ergo, it is

unlikely that these are Africanized Killer Bees. If they were, he would have been stung innumerable times and may not have lived to make it to the hospital.

If these are the desirable European Honey Bees which are dying off in alarming numbers, then to hire pest control to eliminate them is a crime.

Calling all beekeepers. Charge the city and replenish your bee stock now.

[LiberalEsto]

3. So THAT'S where they all went

Maybe they're practicing for an attack on a certain pig farm in Crawford.

[Mojorabbit]

4. Most counties

have beekeepers who will come for free and remove bees and take them home. This does not make any sense.

[Trillo]

5. There are hobbyist beekeepers, too!

I've read they like to locate a "wild" hive to capture and move it somewhere else. Get some honey. pollinate local crops. yada yada.

[ashling]

7. I'm sure these folks are all over it - moving the bees, that is

The following story/pictures ran in the Denton paper last month Prosper is just up the road.

John and Penne Coxsey of Pilot Point remove a hive of bees from
an oak tree in Denton on Friday. Resident Diana Mitchell found the
bees in her backyard on Farris Street when the tree fell over.


Penne Coxsey brushes bees into a box while her husband, John, looks
for the queen bee in a fallen tree in a Denton backyard.

***
“They’re the most fascinating insect God ever put on Earth,” Coxsey said.

Over the years, Coxsey kept bees and sold the honey, learning by trial and error and by be­friending other beekeepers. He knows how many eggs the queen lays in a day (2,500 to 3,000), how long until the larvae hatch (about two weeks) and how long they stay inside before they get to work (another two weeks).

“Then they work so hard they fly their wings off in 30 days,” Coxsey said.


***

Once they were ready, the couple gave their phone number to local exterminators. With domestic bees suffering a mysterious decline, wild beehives are better moved than killed.

Recently, Diana Mitchell was happy to learn from her exterminator that the bees living in a fallen oak tree in her Denton backyard might find a better home. She felt bad that she had mistaken the hive for wasps and had sprayed it.

As a second-grade teacher, she’s always trying to coach her students to observe, but not disturb, nature.

“I knew better,” Mitchell said.

She called the Coxseys, who started the slow, careful process of rescuing the hive on Friday.

John Coxsey used a chain saw and wedges to break the tree and reach the honeycomb, placing some of the combs into a waiting apiary. Penne Coxsey helped prop up sections of tree trunk and brushed hundreds of worker bees inside the box. They worked for a few hours before realizing the queen was probably deep inside the knot of the old tree.

***

But Penne Coxsey said it would be best to leave the apiary in place for a few days anyways, so that more of the scout bees could be recovered.



Meanwhile, John Coxsey put some of the honeycomb in plastic bags to freeze. The combs had wax moth larvae in them. Freez­ing would kill the parasites and help reclaim the combs for the bees. There were enough wax- and bee-eating worms throughout the hive that he was convinced the hive would have died off.

If he can’t recover the queen, he plans to buy a new one from a supplier in Kentucky, Coxsey said. The key was to recover enough worker bees to rescue and rebuild the hive.

He admired their pluck — the bees kept building, even after the tree fell and the moths invaded. And they stayed calm through all his sawing and thumping and brushing and dumping.

“They’re good bees,” Coxsey said.

[flashl]

8. Good info. Thanks. nt