Bees in a Termite hill

Rescuing bees from a termite hill

On 18th March 2014, I was invited to extract bees from a termite-hill which was in a plot of land where constructing was going to take place very soon. And this termite hill was just a few metres (10metres) from the road.  Bees normally nest in termite hills when abandoned by termites since they have possess hollows enough for bees to live in. this is also common because a few bees are domesticated and most of the huge trees have been cut down due to urbanization and charcoal burning. Well these were the traditional nests for bees and bees could nest in the hollow parts on these trees. Bees cannot easily nest on branches of trees in an open (as swarms) because there are a lot of predators like birds, lizards, insects and human beings!
The person who called me said; if you love bees, come and rescue them or else I am going to buy petrol and use it to set fire on them! Of course as a beekeeper and a hobbyist, I had to run fast and rescue the bees.
The manipulation process was simple and easy. I dug a hole on the side of the hill. Note, the bees had their entrance right on the top of the hill and this helped when I covered the entrance with a box as I manipulate.
After opening into the nest chamber, I began puffing smoke into the nest which drove bees up into the box where they collected. This lasted for over 30 minutes until all bees including the queen abandoned the combs in the nest chamber to seek refuge in the box.
When all bees were in the box, I removed the combs which I tied on the bars which I put in the hive where I moved and installed the bees.
I covered the box as bees when on the upper side and carried them into the new hive.. All this happened from 6pm up to 2pm. I decided to use that period of time purposely to collect all bees including the foragers since by then all have come back and the place of scene was too close to a road therefore I didn't want to inconvenience people using the road. Likely some people stopped by to watch the proceedings though I and Amos we constantly requested them to keep distance.

The operation was successful and the bees are happily living in their new home and we rescued them from killers.