Patience is a virtue catch it if you can, seldom found in a woman and never in a man. My mother must of said this to me 10,000 times growing up and overall I have great patience but sometimes I get ahead of myself like with the 40' swarm.
I get a call from a nice single mother with a honeybee swarm in her sweet gum tree behind her house at about 8 pm. She wanted to save the bees and get them out of her yard. I was sitting down for dinner with my family and I am gone a lot at this time of year so the bees had to wait. I finally got to Republic, MO at dark and realized these bees were very high and I did have my trusty pole/ bucket but no ladder. The first thing in my mind should of been "come back tomorrow when you are completely prepared" but my impatient brain said you can do this from your truck-box in the bed of your truck....Wrong thoughts. I guess we could say pain will wake you up every time.
I got my truck under the swarm and realized I was still a bit short and strapped a milk carton to the truck-box for the extra 6" i needed in height. So there I am in the dark with the owner and her 6 year old son pointing a light at the swarm and me in shorts / t shirt ready to save the bees. (Lol if I would of paused I would of said lets wait till tomorrow.) I raise the bucket connected on the pole and get it under the swarm pushing the bucket around the hanging mass till I feel tension on the tree limb... I thought. Then I say "here we go" and start to push upward quickly to knock the swarm in the bucket. All I feel is air and then thousands of bees falling all over my head, neck, shoulders and chest....mad and stinging me. I jump down off the truck, drop everything and start rubbing slapping bees off my body. I rip my shirt off over my head and look over to see a terrified mom and kid starring wide eyed and he begins to cry. Yeah show the kid bees are good and wont sting you unless they have a reason.....I gave them a reason.
All in all no one got stung but me and I got about 40-60 stings on my head, neck, chest and arms. I once again learned another lesson in life "If it doesn't feel right then don't force it!" As you see in the video below I went back the next day to calm bees in the same spot with a tall ladder and all were captured without incident.
Check the videos out below...
#savethebees #bees #afuturewithbees
Doing it Wrong:
Doing It Right: