Montour Trail-Letter

Volume 13, Issue 4

July/August, 2002

On Friday, May 24, alert trail users Millie Getty and Peggy Donnelly of Bethel Park made similar phone calls to MTC President Peter Kohnke and myself. The message: A swarm of honey bees had settled in close proximity to our Trail near the Irishtown Road parking lot. Both of the callers were concerned that an unsuspecting pedestrian or bicyclist might run into the swarm and be seriously injured. Additionally, both were very concerned that the bees not be harmed but, in effect, rescued from the potentially dangerous situation.

Millie, who called me, mentioned that she had contacted Trax Farms about local beekeepers, but she was told that neither of the two known to them could be reached until after the Memorial Day weekend. After conferring with Peter, I decided to follow up on Millie's efforts to find a beekeeper that would be interested in capturing the swarm.

I began with the Yellow Pages, but there are only two listings. One of the two numbers was disconnected; the second offered only extermination services. I called one exterminator, Mary Jaquay of Pest Shield and told her of our dilemma. She suggested I contact her chemicals supplier, Southern Millcreek Products of Ohio, in Robinson Township. They, in turn, suggested a call to Charles Aaron who works for Clayko Exterminating in Greensburg, but is also a beekeeper. I left a message with him, and also called Dr. Rolands at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Entomology Department, where I was informed only service staff was available for the weekend.

I waited patiently and Chuck Aaron returned my call around six that evening. He was excited and delighted with the news of our 'find.' We made arrangements to meet at the Irishtown Road parking lot the next morning, Saturday, May 25.

The swarm appeared innocent enough; it looked just as though someone had bundled up an old, dark brown jacked and draped in over a small tree. On closer inspection, however, you could see thousands of bees, each about one-half inch long, all either clinging to or crawling around on each other. Chuck estimated there were approximately ten to 15 pounds of bees in the swarm!

He placed an open hive beneath the swarm, which was about three feet from the ground. He then barely twitched a branch. The swarm seemed to slip off the branch into the hive like a mass of dark buzzing pudding. Chuck then lit a curious little contraption that looked like a tin coffee pot with a funnel on one end and a bellows on the other, which he used to make 'smoke' to sedate the bees for transportation.

Chuck was as interesting as his methods. A wiry fellow in his seventies but with an iron constitution, he is used to working outdoors and probably capable of out-working a man half his age. He was completely comfortable with the bees, not in a scientific sense, but as something he'd grown up with that formed a link all the way from his childhood to the present. The hour I spent with him kept me as enchanted as the bees, listening to his flowing discourse on the ways of honey bees, the difficulties in keeping a colony healthy, how and when they seek a new hive, and how endangered they have become. I had the feeling that he would have been saying the same things in the same easy and natural manner had I been there to listen or not.

After waiting about that hour to allow stragglers to enter the hive, he placed the lid on the hive, put it in his truck, and left for home. By noon, the Queen and her court were on their way to a permanent and protected home in Westmoreland County.

To Millie and Peggy, who first noticed the hive, thank you for your interest and intiative. A vanishing resource has been given a real chance at survival. As Chuck Aaron said so well, 'Ain't seen a swarm like this in, maybe, thirty years! Ain't likely to see another.'