Beekeeper Vic Bachman says the hive, which was 3.6 metres long, 1.2 metres wide and 40 centimetres deep, is the largest he’s ever seen.
“It’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I’ve never seen one that big,” he told AAP.
(That’s what she said).
Bachman estimated that he took approximately 6.5kg worth of bees out of the one hive… That’s a lot of bees!
Vic and his partner, Nate Hall, used smoke to mollify the bees and, not wanting to hurt them, used a special vacuum to suck them up.
The owner of the cabin, Paul Bertagnolli, said that while the whole process was both time consuming and costly (six hours, paying the men $100 an hour) he had used much of the recovered wax and honeycomb for candles and lotions to stock in his store.
Bertagnolli also said that the hive was the biggest that he’d ever seen.
So, all is well that ends well, right? The 60,000 strong colony go to some Utah bee reserve (if such a thing actually exists) and Mr Bertagnolli gets so bountiful a supply of fresh beeswax and royal jelly that he can keep his shitty general goods store open forever.
That store will still be full of candles and all manner of other useless crap long after you and everybody you’ve ever known are dead and buried.
Now, buzz off!
Image: Getty
