This morning a fellow beekeeper and myself had a very long and interesting conversation.
We got chatting about a very traumatic incident he was called to attend to yesterday. The client has had bees resident in his compost bin for between 3 and 4 months. The compost bin was housed in a pretty small courtyard where his dog had access. According to the client the bees have never bothered anyone so he had left them alone.
The temperatures over the last week have hit over 30 degrees and yesterday something set the bees off and they stung the clients dog and it unfortunately passed away.
My beekeeper colleague was called in to try and remove the dog and to sort out the bees before anyone else was hurt.
In discussion this morning he feels very strongly that unmanaged bees in an urban area remain dangerous and if you know you have bees, that it remains your responsibility to have them removed safely by a registered beekeeper.
We then got chatting about a recent post that I have been tagged in where it has been said that my services to remove bees are ‘way to expensive.’ I know what I bring to the table.
I have addressed this in many posts previous to this one and I will just say this. If you pay peanuts you get monkeys.
You are paying for petrol, our experience, time on site, equipment, insurance etc. We are specialists and a bee removal is a specialist service.
I can also say as the move to more commercial beekeeping has begun for me, I am being extremely selective the removals that I do and will possibly stop removals altogether once the goal is achieved. Please if you have bees, have them removed safely so as to avoid the pain of losing an animal and risking the bees swarming.
Reach out and if what’s been quoted is out of your budget, negotiate with us, we are not unreasonable folk. Make sure whomever you contract to remove bees is DALRRD registered. This is legally required and is a MINIMUM requirement.
Ideally your beekeeper should also be WCBA registered as a bee removal specialist.