It took only minutes for a 2-pound swarm of bees to materialize near Tenderheart Day Care on Tuesday morning. And that is about how long it took Stanton Wurm to gather the bees up and carry them to Lebo that afternoon.
Bees are Wurm’s hobby. And a find like this is pure gold.
“It’s a nice size,” Wurm said after he’d removed the bees from the home day-care center’s back yard and safely boxed them up. “If I buy them, they cost about $63. That’s about what a hive like this would cost, plus shipping. So I’m tickled.”
It made for an interesting day at 2500 La Cruz Court. Beverly Johanning had been in the yard with the children around 9:30 a.m. when she decided it was time for everyone to have a potty break.
“We came back out in about 10 minutes and there it was,” she said. “We were lucky we weren’t out here.”
Neither the adults nor the children wanted to kill the bees, especially since Johanning had heard stories of a bee shortage nationwide. She made some calls and someone suggested Wurm, a Wolf Creek employee.
Nobody had to ask him twice.
“I had seven hives going into last fall, but I’ve only got one now,” Wurm said. “This one will be a big help.”
Wurm got interested in beekeeping when he was still in junior high school, after an older man showed him the ropes.
“It’s interesting and the guy that got me started was interesting to listen to,” Wurm said.
During high school and college, the hobby got put to one side for a while. But three years ago, Wurm decided it was time to get out the mask and the gloves again. He hasn’t regretted it.
It’s not always the most painless of hobbies. He’s been stung through his gloves and his thin bodysuit before. But honeybee clusters like the one on Tuesday usually aren’t aggressive and, according to one pest control Web site, don’t often stay for longer than a day or two.
The clusters occur when the bees are looking for a place to build a new colony. The rest of the bees will go wherever they smell the queen, which makes it easier for beekeepers like Wurm to box the whole crew up. But it also meant that Wurm spent a little time afterward breaking off small pieces of branches to make sure none of the scouts hung around.
“Anywhere she touches on a limb, she leaves a pheromone trail, and they’ll follow that,” he explained.
The children watched as Wurm took the bees down, while the adults made sure the children kept a safe distance. Afterward, everyone seemed to agree it had been pretty cool.
“You’ll really have something to tell Daddy tonight, won’t you?” Johanning said.
sciguy (anonymous) says...
With all of the bad news about bee hive deaths, it is good to hear at least one positive story.
May 23, 2007 at 8:03 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )