Survivor Diet Day 12 | Capturing the Swarm - bees and honey Survivor

Survivor Diet Challenge - For 40 days I’m going to live off the land. I’m going to find, forage, fish, hunt, gather, grow or scavenge all of my food. Everything I eat - I’m going to get from the outdoors. Follow me or join me on my quest - Do YOU have what it takes to Survive? Official Rules and Guidelines: https://www.survivordietchallenge.com/p/official-rules.html Weekly Survivor Diet Rewards: https://www.survivordietchallenge.com/p/weekly-rewards.html (weight or BP updates if applicable) “To achieve the impossible; it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.” ~Tom Robbins Today, it’s not very nice outside so I’m going to go back in time a bit and show you how I began the hobby of beekeeping in my backyard. This is a special episode of the Survivor Diet - - - Capturing the Swarm! I came home from work one day and my daughter was all excited to tell me that there were thousands of bees flying all around the tree in the backyard! She was a little frightened but mostly excited. I thought that if I could somehow capture this swarm of bees and provide a home for them, then in return they could make some golden delicious honey for me during my Survivor Diet. Fortunately for me I had recently been doing a lot of reading and research about raising bees for their honey and I had been slowly accumulating all of the equipment needed to get started - like a protective bee suit, some other bee handling equipment and a couple of beehives in my backyard as you see here. All I needed were some bees. The plan today is NOT very simple. I intend to somehow climb 40 feet up this gigantic elm tree. Then I will attempt to capture this swarming ball of bees in a cardboard box, and finally transplant the bees into the wooden hive I have set up in my yard. Wish me luck! Every bee hive consists of one queen bee among thousands of worker and drone bees. When a colony of honey bees gets too large for the hive they will split up and thousands of bees along with the queen will suddenly leave the hive in search of another suitable home. This is the swarm! At first they will land on an object like a tree branch as you see here and then slowly settle into a ball of bees surrounding and protecting the queen. Scout bees will fly off in different directions to search for their new home. Once they find a good spot they will come back to the colony and somehow communicate the location to the rest of the colony. Then they will all fly off and start their new hive. In this case, a ball of bees has taken temporary residence in my tree. It’s my job as a bee guardian to help relocate them into a new, safe home… my empty hive box on the ground below. The only problem is that the bee ball is about 40 feet up in the air. I need to figure out how to get the bees from the ball to the box without getting killed in the process. I laid on the ground for quite some time just looking up at the bees - trying to think of a way to get this done. After rummaging through my garage and my boat, I found a bunch of old ropes that I thought might be useful. Since a ladder would never reach this high, I needed to somehow use the ropes to hoist myself up to the ball of bees. Here’s where my story begins… My daughter Jamie (she was 11 at the time) she does most of the filming. Also helping me with some filming and other stuff is our neighbor Jake and my wife Debbie is also helping out. On my first attempt I thought I could tie one end of the rope to the back of my truck, drape it over a branch higher than the bees and tie the other end around my body. As Debbie pulled the truck forward, I would be lifted right up to the bees. This didn’t turn out very well as the ropes got too tight around my body. Attempt number two involved a chair and Jake was kind enough to volunteer his 52 pounds to test out this idea. Success! But now it was time to see if this pulley system could handle my body weight… Once I rigged up a third rope as a safety rope, it was time to suit up and go for it. I’m taking a cardboard box and a bee brush up into the tree with me and my idea is if I can get close enough to the bee ball, I’m going to brush them all right into the box and close it up. I’m so glad I thought of a safety rope because the main line broke when I was 40 feet up! Yikes. After another couple of tries I was able to gather the swarm into the cardboard box. Unfortunately I got a few stings in the process. The face is like the worst place to get stung. I was better after about 4 days but this just shows what a single sting can do so make sure you are careful and you should also have an epi pen handy whenever you are doing work with bees. The bees eventually made this hive their new home and after a few short months and a lot of hard work by the bees, I was able to extract the first few jars of honey.

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