My little backyard bee yard was barely big enough to handle my latest rescue. I’ll let the audiophiles provide a precise description, but to me it’s one honking big and heavy stereo speaker—with a beehive inside, which I am trying to trap out into a nearby nuc, which could use more bees. If that fails, I’ll do a conventional vac and cutout, but I’m so proud of my trapout cone that I wanted to use it again. Kinda looks like Pinocchio’s nose on the speaker.
I love nearby bee jobs where I can just "grab and go," and I thought this might be one of them, when a neighbor called to ask if I could help with bees in an “outdoor speaker.” I said yes and asked for a picture. I thought the speaker would be one of those little plastic jobs you set on the patio. But no, not an easy-bees grab-and-go this time. I could tell the speaker was about 4 feet tall, but I had no idea how heavy these things are. It’s gotta weight close to 100 pounds. Again, I defer to the audiophiles. As for “outdoor,” it was outdoors all right, as in sitting behind the garage.
I plugged the entrance hole with a towel and used the homeowner’s dolly to get the monster about 50 feet to my car, managed to tip it into the trunk and drove home and repeated the drill to get it into my bee yard. I finished just before dark, drenched in sweat and late for the wine hour.
The bees seemed friendly, given what I had put them through. I'll have to wait a week or so to see what's going on inside.
