'Sting' carried out on E. Jefferson
East Jefferson Street was abuzz Thursday morning when business owners found a sizable swarm of honeybees in a small, decorative tree.
Nathan Troyan and Nick Fazzoni of Butler Brew Works, concerned about the decreasing number of honeybees across the U.S. and locally, immediately began making calls. They wanted to find a beekeeper who could retrieve the raisin-sized pollinators and re-home them at an apiary.
Enter Bruce Fresh of Bruin, who helped with his father's bees as a teenager and got back into beekeeping when he retired last year.
He pulled into the parking lot where the former Hot Dog Shop once stood and donned his beekeeping garb before gently scraping the clump of about 3,000 honeybees into a foil pan.
He tr
ansferred the tiny, disoriented creatures into a hive box placed against the trunk of the tree, as startled motorists waiting at the traffic light on Jefferson Street furiously rolled up their windows.Fresh then returned to his truck about 15 feet away.Because the queen was deposited into the white hive box, Fresh explained, the majority of her minions joined her while some others continued to buzz around the hive.Fresh also took down the branch that contained the queen's pheromones from a separate infestation two years ago by the same swarm.Furious activityFresh sat patiently on the tailgate of his truck, warning pedestrians to take a wide berth around the hive and its furious activity.None ignored his advice.“I'm waiting for the stragglers to go into the hive,” Fresh said calmly.He said the queen will lay 1,200 to 2,000 eggs that will produce her worker bees, which in turn will gather nectar to make honey.Fresh said it will take about a year for the bees to produce the sticky, golden treat.Fresh will keep some, give a few jars away, and maybe sell some if his hives produce enough.Troyan and Fazzoni came out to take pictures and carefully check out Fresh's progress in removing the bees.
Troyan, who has degrees in botany and biology, said a huge hive revealed itself when the Hot Dog Shop was torn down several years ago, and the swarm in the same small tree pestered him as he tried to set up for the 2019 annual Bantam Jeep Festival.“I guess they like this corner,” he said.Troyan said the bees were fairly docile when he noticed them early in the morning.“But as the traffic started getting noisy, they started to wake up,” Troyan said.Queen's locationHe used a heat gun from the brewery to take the temperature of the swarm from a distance, which was an even 79 degrees with the exception of the queen's location, which measured 89.“They keep her warm,” Fresh said.Troyan and Fazzoni wanted to ensure the bees were removed humanely and taken to an apiary to do their thing.“We were mainly concerned that they find a good home,” Troyan said. “We need bees. They pollinate hops and crops.”He said local honey is used in one of the brewery's wheat beers.Once most of the bees were inside the hive, Fresh placed a square of window screening over the hive box's entrance so the bees would have air on the way to their new home with his other two hives in Bradys Bend.“I only got stung once,” he said.
