Southern Oregon Swarms makes hive ‘bee gone’ from The Village Baker on Main Street
By Emma Coke, Ashland.news
Two stories of scaffolding leaned up against The Village Baker on Monday afternoon, providing a platform for a beekeeper to reach up and remove a colony of unwelcome tenants: honeybees.
Tristen Tartaglia, owner of Southern Oregon Swarms, was contacted Saturday about the colony of bees who built their hive inside the facade’s decorative trim along the 300 block of East Main Street in downtown Ashland. Tartaglia said she was concerned that the hive could be so heavy and full of honey that it would cause the trim to collapse and fall on passersby. It was an emergency.
“Bees think everything has the structural integrity of a tree,” Tartaglia said.
Around 1:30 p.m. Monday, Tartaglia showed up to the site, decked out in her pink bee suit and ready to extract the bees and their hive from the trim.
“We take them back home and rehab them, overwinter them, and then keep them for another year to make sure they’re strong,” said Chuck Skeen, an employee of Southern Oregon Swarms.
Thirty minutes later, Tartaglia and Skeen realized they didn’t have enough scaffolding to reach up to the beehive. Skeen had to drive to Medford to rent more scaffolding to get the job done.
“This is higher than we’ve ever gone before,” Tartaglia said.
Two hours later and with the right amount of scaffolding, they were back in business.
Working atop the scaffolding, Tartaglia sawed into the trim, prying back the wood to get to the beehive. Chunks of rotted wood crashed down onto the sidewalk and a flurry of bees buzzed around her.
According to Skeen, bees create a humid environment, hence the rotted wood.
“No matter the weather, it’s never the right climate for bees,” Skeen said.
The commotion caused many passersby to stop in their tracks and look up, confused and intrigued by the process.
Tartaglia pried the slabs of honeycomb out from the trim and placed them between panels she rubber-banded together for transport. The panels were then put into a large plastic bin that sat beside her as she worked.
“We’ll wrap it up like a present and take it home,” Tartaglia said.
The hive was 8 inches deep and ran parallel to the building.
The most important part of the process was finding the queen. Without a queen, bee colonies collapse.
After finding the queen, she placed her in a plastic tube. The tube’s lid had holes too small for the big queen to escape, but big enough that regular bees could still interact with her.
“I put the queen in time out, and the rest will follow,” Tartaglia said.
Many bees are queen-loyal, but some are hive-loyal. Collecting the hive’s honeycomb and the queen therefore appeases both types of bees.
While scraping out the remnants of honeycomb, Tartaglia sprayed the inside of the trim and its surrounding with almond extract. To bees, the strong smell is aggravating, keeping them from coming back.
Even with the hive extracted, Tartaglia and Skeen’s job wasn’t done. They had to wait for nightfall, when the rest of the bees that fly around return to their hive. Instead of the trim, the bees made their way to their temporary home of the extracted honeycomb panels.
“They’re just majestic creatures,” Tartaglia said.
Email Ashland.news reporter intern Emma Coke at [email protected].
Aug. 14: Corrected to clarify that Tristen Tartaglia is owner of Southern Oregon Bees and Chuck Skeen is an employee.
