Friday, 11 December 2020

Bee Kind To Bee's


Cherise Mulzac first noticed bees in her East Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York apartment in 2016 ....

A Bee House Invasion - The Honey Pot.
Bee Invasion - Honey Pot.
 
..... but didn't really think about it. However when in 2017 she touched the walls of her apartment and found honey dripping down the walls, she knew she had a problem.

She called third-generation pest controller Mickey Hegedus (aka Mickey The Beekeeper), who after cutting a 4ft-hole in her ceiling found approximately 35,000 honeybees. Mickey sucked the bees (which he believed had been there for around two years), into a hive box using a special low-pressure vacuum. He also found 60 to 70lbs of honey,  most of which the enterprising Cherisse scooped into jars to keep as edible mementos from her brush with the bees.

Mickey transported the bees back to his home in Brooklyn, New York where he keeps them in hives in his back garden, which was more than two miles away from Cherisse's apartment, thus ensuring they would not return.

Perhaps Cherisse should have taken a leaf from Fiona Presly of Inverness in the Scottish Highlands developed an unusual friendship .... with a queen bumblebee.

The pair first came into contact in 2017, when Ms Presley noticed the bee in her garden, and that it had no wings. She had picked the bee up to place her on to a flower in the sunshine, after spotting her lethargic on the grass. Later noticing that the bee hadn't perked up after being placed on some flowering heather, she took her indoors and fed her sugar water.

A call to the Bumblebee Conservation Trust for help confirmed that the bee likely had a virus known to cause problems in wing development, with little hope of survival on her own. Normally, a queen bumblebee would spend the spring and summer building a nest, mating and starting a new colony, but then dying in the Autumn to be replaced by one of her daughters.

'Bee' The Little Bee, Received TLC
'Bee' The Little Bee Received TLC

However with Ms Presly's care, including creating her a special flower area of her own under netting, and with regular sugar water supplements, 'Bee' the little bee survived a few weeks longer than her expected lifespan .... but she died on Ms Presley's hand after they had formed a bond over the Spring, Summer and Autumn. Fiona believes that the bond they formed, showed that humans and insects can have a relationship.

Of course there is a serious point to this ... Bees are endangered around the globe, and anything that helps them is a good thing.

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