The buzz around North Port
North Port, FL is the city where I work for the local newspaper. One morning, a resident called me, saying she had been seeing this big colony of some sort in a tree across from her home. She thought it was a big wasp nest or something similar.
She first noticed it last fall, and she called the city to see if something could be done. The owner of the vacant lot where the colony was, was an out of state corporation that could not be reached.
But after several phone calls, the city told her there was nothing they could do and she would have to deal with it herself.
In the spring, the colony grew a lot larger and she became more alarmed as the weather warmed up. once again, no one in the city she spoke with offered any help.
So she turned to the local paper, looking for suggestions. The editorial writer (Howard) and I took a ride out, and this is what we saw:
About 30-35 ft way up near the top of a pine tree was this colony. With the binoculars, we could see what looked like bees, and the hanging combs of hexagonal chambers.
I called the county extension office and spoke with the resident entomologist, Dr. Fred Santana. I described what I saw and also sent him this photo, a close-up of the hive. From where we stood on the ground, it looked about 3 ft wide by 3 ft deep.
This is a close-up of what we could see from ground level. They clearly look like bees. Lantana agreed, and said he felt they could be Africanized bees which have been documented in Florida since 1994. He based that statement on the way the combs of the nest were hanging from a tree. Most European honeybees, he said, tend to nest in houses, or hollow trees or logs, but when they have some African-type bees, then they more often build nests in trees like this one.
Now that we knew there was a possibility of Africanized bees, we contacted city officials to see if there were something they could do. I called the Fire Marshal and Howard contacted the City Manager. They concluded something needed to be done. So the fire department went out to look it over that afternoon, and then arranged for a bee expert to come out the next day to remove the hive. Above, you see two of the firemen with the bee gear on, getting ready to use a foam hose if needed.
The firemen who were going to stand by with the foam hose were all taped with duct tape, so no bees could get into their clothing. If there were Africanized bees in this hive, they might be very angry and aggressive and could attack.
Here they are getting instructions. Earlier that day, the Fire Rescue Department, North Port Police and the Environmental Specialist went door-to-door in the neighborhood to warn everyone to stay inside around midday, when they planned to remove the hive. That morning, police also kept an eye on it, making sure no kids on their way to school disturbed the hive. I had written an article about the beehive for that morning's paper, but I had not identified precisely where it was, at the city's request, so people would not come around to disturb it.
The city Landscape Department brought around a bucket truck. The bee expert (second from left in the white bee suit) would operate the bucket himself. He planned to foam down the hive to quiet the bees, and he also had a chain saw to remove lower branches that were in the way. Ultimately he was going to cut the hive down and let it fall to the ground. When the hive landed, the firemen would spray it with more foam. Although the city wanted to see if the bees could be recovered unharmed, the expert said due to the size of the hive, there was no way to do that.
The firemen are ready at ground level. You can barely see the hive, which is directly above the highest point of the arm of the bucket, near the top of this photo. This will give you a sense of the scale of the thing!
Once the operation started, everyone who was not wearing protective gear had to get inside a vehicle. I was sitting in the back of the Fire Marshal's vehicle, while our photographer sat in front so she could get the better photos. Hence I could not see a lot where I was. But here is a shot of the firemen spraying foam on a major part of the hive after it had been cut down and allowed to fall on the roadway.
Again, not the greatest shot, but the firemen are hosing down the hive with the foam. Everyone had been concerned that the bees might be very angry and aggressive. The bee expert in the bucket said later that several had buzzed pretty persistently around his head, but the bees we could see flying around at ground level did not seem particularly hostile.
The bee expert said, once he got close to the hive, he saw it was about 6 ft long and about 3 ft wide! He estimated it held about 250,000 bees.
Here is a close-up of a chunk of the comb with the foam around it. The city cut off a big piece, with some bees still inside, and sent it off to the state Agriculture Department where they will run genetic tests on the bees. The only way to know for sure whether you have Africanized bees is through genetic testing, because they generally look identical to the usual European honeybee and, unless they show exceptionally aggressive behavior, you cannot use behavior alone to classify them.
They are known, however, to swarm a person very aggressively and they will also chase someone who has disturbed them more than half a mile. Their danger is in the fact that hundreds of them may attack and sting at once. Reportedly, being stung by 300 Africanized bees can be fatal.
Read more about Africanized Bees here.