Published: May 12, 2008 12:21 am            

Area beekeeper swarms to Enid family’s rescue

Richard and Denise Henneke have a stinging problem at their house.

They have been invaded by honeybees that have established a hive in their garage at their Enid home. Denise Henneke said she first noticed the bees Thursday evening, a swarm looking for a home.

“And they decided to make our home theirs,” she said.

She said she has raised the garage door, then returned to the house. When she went back outside, she saw a large black cloud of bees over the garage. She ran back to the house, getting her children and dog inside.

The bees created a hive between the outside and inside wall of their garage around a pipe that once housed electrical wire.

There are about 30 buzzing around the hole. As they began to make their hive Thursday, she said a two-foot-long beard of bees was present. Richard sprayed them with wasp spray, which did not kill them. Since then, they have stayed away.

Help is on the way, she said, but in the meantime the Hennekes are trying to stay away from the bees and not stir them up.

Henneke said she has hired Herman Black a Ringwood area farmer and a beekeeper, to come get the bees. Black said he plans to come to the Hennekes’ house about dark today to try and get the bees.

“You do what you gotta do,” he said about moving the bees.

He plans to remove the in-side panels in the garage, then try to find the queen bee. If he finds the queen, he will catch her and place her in a bee box so the others will gather around her. If he cannot find the queen, he said, he will scrape as many as possible into his bee box and hope the queen is there.

Black has removed bees from buildings before and said he will wear protective gear.

“The boys that say bees won’t sting are lying to you,” he said.

Black will try to move the bees just before dark Monday so he can get as many as possible. During the day, the bees are away from the hive hunting pollen, but they return to the hive in early evening.

A honeybee hive is a small colony, but a small one may contain 20,000 bees. Some larger hives may have as many as 100,000 bees. Hives include one queen, hundreds of drones and thousands of worker bees.

Bees communicate with each other about food sources using dances. The movement of the bees is picked up by tiny hairs on their head.

The honeybee hive is made of wax and is where the queen lays her eggs, up to 1,500 a day.

The workers collect pollen and nectar from flowers, and the pollen is used as an energy source. The nectar is turned into honey.