A Rosedale resident has found something in a new house he is constructing that has created quite a buzz.
Shawn Bulechowsky has been busy this summer building a home in Rosedale. Last week he was in the basement working on some of the new plumbing when he noticed a bee, then a few more.
Quickly this grew to thousands of bees swarming the basement. Because the framing was still open, the insects began to spread into the upper floors where others were working on the house.
They evacuated the property as the bees began to build a hive between their floor joists.
Bulechowsky told the Mail that he has never seen anything like this and needless to say, construction was halted while they regrouped to find a solution.
Enter Ron Davies of the Cambria area. He and his family have recently started their own hive of honeybees and have about 4,000 in a colony on their property. They took it on as a cottage industry.
“Right now we have them for personal use, but eventually we want to sell honey,” Davies tells the Mail, “It is also a good thing to be doing, we need bees.”
Bulechowsky called on Davies and he assessed the situation.
He concluded quickly the insects in question are honeybees, and because of their docile temperament, were probably a strain from New Zealand. Davis surmises the bees are from a hive in the area that might have been upset, causing the bees to swarm and take up a new residence.
Last Thursday evening, Ron and his son Parker scooped up the bulk of the bees into pails and took them to a new hive and a couple of days later, picked up the stragglers. John Moerschbacher of the Rosebud area came and collected the remaining bees.
Because it is impossible to identify where the bees came from, Davies and Moerschbacher have now added about 5,000 more bees to his own population to make honey and continue to pollinate and Bulechowsky can continue to work on his home.
Bulechowsky is grateful to the beekeepers who came to help clear his property of the bees.
