On Saturday, May 11, 2013, KSL news, FOX13 news, KUTV news, and ABC4 news reported a unique hive located in a master bedroom wall in Provo, Utah.
Eco Bee Box teamed up with Utah Bee Removal in removing this colony relocating it to a local apiary. The process of live bee removals is difficult but it has its benefits. Both Utah Bee Removal and Eco Bee Box believe the wild local hives are the key to understanding the bee collapse across the nation. A colony like the one described in news grew and out-performed the many other beekeeper maintained colonies.
A few other hives that were removed in 2013 of note are:
- Old Post Office in Bountiful Utah
- Pepperwood Hive in Sandy Utah
- Impressive Westminster College hive in Salt Lake City Utah
- Gigantic swarm from Farmington Utah
- Cottonwood Heights Utah floor hive in the master bedroom
- Sandy Utah soffit hive (this house has two identical)
These colonies are examples of why successful local queen stock should be rescued and cultivated, rather than importing all our queens. Queen grafting or queen rearing is ideal with successful wild stock and is exactly what Darwin referred to as Natural Selection.
Many established wild colonies are killed across the country each year. These colonies have the key to the world’s demise in the bee population. Some colonies excel without treatments or care and even under attack from homeowners have withstood and grown.
Wild honey bee colonies living within city limits are the most intriguing as there is much opposition to their existence. Colonies documented as several years old are the most beneficial to study and acquire queens from. A queen can produce 1500 eggs a day, these eggs can be grafted by a skilled beekeeper and placed into a queenless colony, 14 days later queens from that stock are produced and ready to mate! If a hive is removed and the comb with eggs are placed into a queenless hive, those bees will produce queens from those eggs themselves. Other methods exist as well. Removing a colony and separating the queen will also generate naturally produced and mated local stock.
Imagine how incredible to study if wild successful queens are gathered from across the country and were brought together to graft from, and the drones from those various colonies were able to open yard mate with the various virgin queens. Imagine that queen stock! Those colonies could very well out-perform the ones we now have.
