Bee Hive Removal

            If you had the opportunity to play golf over the weekend, you might have noticed a tree missing on the back, left of #15 green.  Removal of 100 year old white oak trees is far from the top of my list of things to do, especially when the temperature is over 100 degrees before noon.  When an eight foot section of the trunk is home to an 80,000 plus honeybee colony it moves up the list at an alarming rate.  After exhausting the options for removing the bees, taking down the tree was the wisest decision.

  

To left: Actual size of the bee colony

         
     Other options included:

1. Remove the queen bee so the colony follows her to a different location.  It was impossible to get inside the tree and find her.
2. Kill bee colony with poison.  Other bees would enter the empty colony and take poison honey back to local hives, in which we become liable at nearly $1000/hive lost.  Plus, Dave Burns, the certified bee keeper of Long Lane Honey Bee Farms, said the comb was too tight for chemicals to work effectively.
3. Seal off entry to bee colony.  The bees will work to find other means of entering and exiting the tree and this would be a temporary solution.
4. Do nothing.  The colony continues to multiply at a rapid rate and eventually part of the population would swarm out of the tree to find a new hive.  An allergic golfer gets stung by bees in which death can occur in a matter of minutes.

     Since it was determined the tree was rotten all the way into the ground, removing it made the most sense.  Some of the benefits include:

1.      Golfer and worker safety

            2.      100% removal of the bee colony and hive
            3.      Healthier green from removing a partially dead tree
            4.      The bee problem has no chance of reoccurring at this particular site

To left: Keith Klismith of Klismith Tree Service suspended in the top of the tree