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20k honey bees took over a tech company’s empty office during lockdown
- joncrane 6y agoCue the typical "Nature is Healing" especially because pollinators are under massive pressure due to pesticides and herbicides. Having said that, I'm glad they called a good beekeper who was able to rescue the hive. Also, I've heard that if you have a bee infestation in your attic for example, not to call an exterminator, but to call a beekeeper. Often these new hives are valuable to hobbyists and they are happy to come take care of it for free. There are apparently directories of local beekeepers all over the world that are fairly easy to find on a search engine.
- yial 6y agoThe information about there being directories and how to handle it is amazing. Thank you for sharing. I’m filing this away in case I ever have to deal with an infestation.
- frockington1 6y agoFinding a hive that can survive the winter can be a multi-year event (at least for me it was). The hive which ended up surviving came from a captured swarm
- lostlogin 6y agoWhat was the cause of the deaths? Here is usually varroa - I’m just contemplating getting my autumn treatments in, as the little horrors are actually visible on frames now. I hate them so much.
- frockington1 6y agoThey didn't save enough honey for the winter. One year they barely survived and a week later the queen was found decapitated in the then-abandoned hive. Bees are hardcore
- k1t 6y agoIt is illegal to kill bees in certain situations in California. An exterminator might refer you to a beekeeper just to avoid any potential liability.
- bluejekyll 6y agoThere are situations where beekeepers may not actually want to capture the hive. Like dangerous ladder work when the have is on a second or third story and only accessible from the outside. I luckily haven’t needed to deal with this, but I do know of people who’ve “thought” they had a “honey bee” problem, but the exterminator came out and confirmed it was a “wasp” problem. This is an area where the intent of the law is good, but sometimes the real world issues of safety of acquiring the hive is complex enough that it’s not safe to attempt, and it’s not clear the law allows for that. (And it’s not just CA that makes it illegal to kill bees, many states have similar laws)
- cabaalis 6y agoI recommend watching Jeff Horchoff on YouTube. He is very polite and his bee removal videos are oddly calming. I've been subscribed for a year or two now. https://youtube.com/c/JeffHorchoff https://youtube.com/c/JeffHorchoff
- sharkweek 6y agoYes! 100% call local beekeepers when possible for an almost always free removal. A beekeeper will sometimes even PAY you so they can come move the hive. No such luck with wasp and hornet nests though. Had to pay to have one of those removed from the siding in our house. And wow were they mad when the beekeeper started vacuuming them up. Got talking to the guy for a while, fascinating industry. He's very nervous about the next 20 years when it comes to honeybees.
- reaperducer 6y agoWhat about carpenter bees? I've seen a lot of those around lately and have been thinking about checking the roof. Do they have the same value as honey bees?
- fersho311 6y agoCarpenter bees are awesome, they pollinate flowers (so we can have fruits in our backyard) and have an awesome short life of minding their own business.
- zrail 6y agoSort of. We had carpenter bees in our deck one summer and they were incredibly agitated and aggressive whenever we tried to use it.
- S_A_P 6y agoThey also have a voracious appetite for Georgia Pine which happens to be the material my inlaws summer home is made from. Not to be outdone, woodpeckers also enjoy eating a carpenter bee and their babies, so we end up with holes from the carpenter bees along with a string of holes made by woodpeckers in search of said bees. Im not really too worried about being stung by them, and I agree they generally dont want to mess with you unless you are actively messing with their burrow. I have taken to putting out sacrificial 2x4s each season that I pre-drill(3/4" holes seem to do the trick) to attract the bees to easier pickings. This helps quite a bit, but I still have to end up spraying a few holes in our siding and deck each year as it will soon be swiss cheese if I do not...
- sunjester 6y agohow much is a beekeeper compared to an exterminator?
- lostlogin 6y agoHere in NZ, the beekeeper is free. They may reject the job though, as cutouts of colonies are horrible.
- jjcon 6y agoI knew a beekeeper that would take them off peoples property for free since they could typically sell them or home them themselves - win win. I don’t think that is uncommon.
- joncrane 6y agoBeekeeper is generally free. Exterminator pricing varies based on locality and scale of the job. Some beekeepers in competitive localities will pay to come remove your hive.
- btgeekboy 6y agoI called a local apiary to remove a wasp nest in the Seattle area. They charged a flat $200 for wasps, and $0 for bees.
- exabrial 6y agoMy dad and sisters are beekeepers. They run around all year to capture swarms. First, they try to capture the queen and mark her, then keep her extra safe in a special cage. Then they have a "bee vacuum" which is basically a shop vac hooked up to a bucket, both with a really low flow rate to avoid injuring the creatures. Most of the time, it's an entertaining process and the bees are as gentle as flies.
- lostlogin 6y ago> They run around all year to capture swarms. There may be a difference in certain regions, but usually swarms are a spring thing, with another small reoccurrence in autumn. Mid summer is quiet and winter has none. This relates to the times at which a queen can mate - there are no male drones in winter (the females kicked them out!) and so any queen that hatched would be a virgin, and couldn’t lay. Sometimes swarms will occur due to bees absconding to get away from High levels of disease. I have never seen this but high levels of varroa can cause it.
- exabrial 6y agoThe ones in the "off seasons" are usually very aggressive from what I've heard. They typically ran away from home to break away from some environmental stress I've been told? I'm not a beekeeper :) Just repeating what I've heard
- lostlogin 6y agoThis must be somewhere warms and with very mild winters? NZ is lucky to have fairly easy going bees - this doesn’t mean that they are all friendly, just that Africanised bees are so much worse. There are accounts of them flying into smokers and putting them out. It’s all rather intense.
- exabrial 6y agoKansas in the midwest. Depends on what you mean by "Mild" haha. We had snow in October, followed weeks later by 90degf temps. Very wide swings.
- lekanwang 6y agoReminds me of when a honeybee swarm occupied the parking lot behind our building and eventually mostly settled on a bike rack (this also happens to be the building of the downtown Palo Alto Philz). As a beekeeper, I was so excited that I emailed our head of ops and physical security in all caps asking if I could have them. After he called me to confirm that I wasn't trolling, he graciously offered to stand guard to keep folks away while I grabbed my bee suit to safely remove the bees and put them in a new home.
- drewdennison 6y agoI remember that incident well and watching you comb the bees into their new home. Good times!
- jgjot-singh 6y agoBeautiful
- stuart78 6y agoI was thinking more along the lines of a pivot for the business into a new line of AI Honey.
- yial 6y agoI’m always amazed at how quickly animals and insects can setup shop. I’ve experienced this a lot in commercial buildings. At my current office, we’ve had crows peck through the roof twice.
- skeeter2020 6y agoTry getting rid of a wasp nest. They will rebuild daily in the exact same spot and it's tough to get them to move on (and you're usually not as polite as with bees)
- Triv888 6y agoAt my house I used to have about 5 new red wasp nest under the soffit every year... Very easy to get rid of with that wasp spray that goes 15-20ft if you catch it early.
- stuff4ben 6y agoThey were trying to transition to becoming CloudBees... but that name is already taken.
- mistersquid 6y agoUnbeelievable!
- wilsocr88 6y agoAs always, there is a relevant xkcd. https://xkcd.com/1439/ https://xkcd.com/1439/
- darkteflon 6y agoI feel like there’s a perfect metaphor in here somewhere.
- michaelmior 6y agoUnrelated to lockdown, but I recall once there was a raccoon who made it into a third floor research lab at my former institution. Apparently it managed to find its way into a ventilation duct somewhere on the ground floor and crawl its way up.
- war1025 6y agoIn the early fall, I got a frantic message from my wife along with a video of something making a hell of a noise in the laundry room. Came home unsure what I'd find, but I figured it was a small mammal of some sort. At first we figured it was something that had nestled into the laundry and was very upset at being tumble dried. Opened the drier door just a crack figuring we'd hear the thing trying to escape or at least snarling at us. Nothing. Determined it was in the dryer vent. I had converted from the normal flexible dryer hose to a solid metal tube the year before because I heard it was more efficient and we were having some issues with our clothes drying. (Ended up being lint build-up. Clean your dryers out folks. I had cleaned all the obvious spots, but there was heat shield that was completely caked with lint and effectively acting as a hot pad keeping the warm air from getting to our clothes) Anyway, proceeded to take the dryer duct apart, figuring it was a mouse or something. Every so often we'd hear the thing start moving around, so I'd kick the dryer on for a second to keep it from going into the blower and trying to get out that way. We were trying to rig up something to catch the mouse in when we finally did get it to come out the open end of the dryer tube. It's a tight space so that was easier said than done. Ended up accidentally disconnecting the end of the tube that connects to the dryer while we were fiddling and figured the mouse had escaped into our house. Heard whatever it was moving around in there still, so I kicked the dryer on to dissuade it from leaving the tube from the wrong end. Heard a big noise, and all the sudden a bird comes shooting out the pipe. About shit my pants and took off running up the stairs. My little 3 year old son had been down there at the time and I didn't realize. He started screaming, which I felt real badly about. Was trying to figure out how we would get a bird to peacefully leave our house. I assumed it wouldn't leave willingly. Crept back down the stairs, and there was a little house finch, sitting on the inside ledge of the window in our entry way. It looked at me as if to say, "I want to be out there, please." So I opened the door and he flew right on out.
- zgin4679 6y agoWait, let me guess... Was it the Bumble office?
- weird-eye-issue 6y agoYou really made an account just for that?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- faeyanpiraat 6y agoIt seems like it got 15 upvotes, so it might have been worth it.
- tomcam 6y agoWait how do you tell if it got upvotes?
- weird-eye-issue 6y agoThis isn't reddit who cares about upvotes here?
- faeyanpiraat 6y agoEveryone. Points help you calibrate your own behaviour to be more helpful to others in this community. Whatever helpful means in a context. In this case it was a funny comment well received by the community.
- roel_v 6y ago20000 bees = one small hive. Doesn't make as catchy a headline of course, but just for reference.
- kurthr 6y agoYeah, I read an article about an 18-wheeler that tipped over with with 1 Million bees, and I couldn't help thinking of Austin Powers! I'd be surprised if there weren't at least 5 Million.
- ssully 6y agoBefore the pandemic, I worked in a building that had a wasp problem. It was not uncommon for a wasp to fly out of the heating vent and hang out in my office.
- controlledchaos 6y agoThat would be a good enough reason for me to work from home.
- gnu8 6y agoFor once the space was put to a productive use.
- corytheboyd 6y agolol I came in with the exact same take :p
- skeeter2020 6y agoThis is an awesome use of VC funding that I whole-heartedly support!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- joshxyz 6y agoModern-day honeypot? Aight imma head out.
- joejerryronnie 6y agoThis happened to an empty conference room while I was working at Stanford. They noticed something was amiss when honey began dripping down the walls.
- lostlogin 6y agoA few observations - I’m a beekeeper. The brood pattern on that comb is horrible - I suspect a lot of varroa, but there are other potential causes. Varroa can be tidied up if the colony isn’t too far gone. Once it’s removed it needs to be kept under observation for a bit, and kept away from clean hives. If it’s carrying something like American Foul Brood, it shouldn’t be spread. Here in NZ the ‘treatment’ for AFB is to burn the colony and the hive. A colony is unlikely to die if the queen is killed (assuming it isn’t winter). They will make a new one from an existing egg. This is a neat write up - and good on the person who removed them. Cutting a colony out of a building is a horrible, messy chore. Catching a swarm is very wary in comparison. Edit: one more thought, comb is white, then it goes yellow, then brown and finally black. This is from use, bee feet and the cocoons that are inside each cell. That process takes time, usually a season of two at least. I retire my comb at about 3 years old. That comb looks quite black - I think it a been there for more than a season (dead bees noticed in April).
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoYou have to burn the colony and hive? Wow thats disturbing
- lostlogin 6y agoYeah, it’s horrible. I haven’t had to do it. NZ rules here. https://afb.org.nz/ https://afb.org.nz/ Edit: Some info. You are required to register any apiary (group of hives) and it’s location after a short duration. You are required to inspect it at least once per year and report the results to the agency. If anyone gets AFB you are required to notify the agency and destroy the hive. A notification is the. sent to beekeepers in the area to warm them to be on alert. We aim to eradicate AFB, and given that it’s mainly caused by beekeepers putting infected comb and equipment into hives and letting dead hives be robbed, this seems achievable. Unfortunately we are doing much worse with this plan than we have do to date with covid eradication. It’s lucky all New Zealanders aren’t beekeepers.
- reaperducer 6y agoIf it was a social media or ad tech company, I'd say let the bees have it. They do more good for society than either of the above.
- jancsika 6y agoI like this stonk.
- justjonathan 6y agoHaving removed ~10,000 bees from my attic, I was surprised to learn, that they fit in a 2 gallon container. 20,000 seems like “a lot” but mass and volume, it’s really not much.
- ashtonkem 6y agoWorkers don't live that long, a few months at most. It's not that surprising that a colony makes a lot of them; they're literally expendable, at least individually.
- Wingman4l7 6y agoFor reference, an average hive has 30k bees in it (20-50,000 if you want a range).
- spamizbad 6y agoWow I would not want to be in charge of that cap table.
- dave_sid 6y agoI wonder if they decided to go with Scrum or Kanban
- rightisleft 6y agoBees?
- vlunkr 6y agoGob's not on board.
- rossdavidh 6y agoThey were always busy workers, but used too many buzzwords. The boss was too gossipy, a real queen bee type. They were pretty good at crosspollinating ideas, but the cubicles felt like cells. They liked to keep the workers in the dark most of the time. They did all feel like members of one big family, though. I know, you're going to downvote me. I have no regrets.
- bordercases 6y agoHoney, why would I?
- google234123 6y agoUnreadable site.
- dn3500 6y agoHow are all of you reading this article? I get a paywall.
- jzer0cool 6y agoAlways fascinated with bees. The swarm behavior, individual unit, and produced goal. The hive. Something I came across is how they regulate heat within the hive. And also how they collectively raise their body temperature to make it too hot inside should a wasp/intruder enter. A 2 degree tolerance allows the bee's to survive than a wasp which enters the hive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNroEwFxh6I&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNroEwFxh6I&t=1s
- danans 6y ago5k honey bees (as estimated by the beekeeper who rescued them) took over one of my trees during the lockdown. Despite being just a few feet above a sidewalk, they didn't harm anyone. A beautiful sight, first time I've ever seen a peaceful swarm up close, hope it's not the last.