Bees 2

Last Thursday I had a job cutting out a colony of bees from a new house under construction. They were in the built-up place under a little half-round balcony and the construction workers were afraid of working with them around, or so the nice lady told me. When I got there I had 2 surprises: 1. the bees were not new-comers and had obviously been there for many months. 2. it wasn't a typical house. It was a castle, and I am not kidding. I wish I'd thought to take photos, but my bad. It had two huge iron doors in front and upon entering you find yourself in a large, circular room with a marble circle in the floor under a domed ceiling about 40 feet above. A circular stairway led to the second floor, where you could see another dome above the somewhat circular balcony. There were carved, embellished, fancified niches in all the walls, and 14" molding around the floors, and 24" crown moldings. There were 3 wings, but I didn't go down any of their halls - I just stayed in the main part of the house. I did notice two large rooms off the entrance (about 60' away) that had identical fireplaces, about 6 feet wide with mantled 30' high, and more fancy niches.
The guy led me upstairs to where I could reach the balcony and we went up the staircase, along the hallway with 3 cupolas in the ceiling and matching circular areas under each with marble circles in the floor, and on into the entertainment room with a huge, wood bar at one end. The bar probably used about 1500 board feet of mahogany and it was beautiful. At the opposite end was a step down into an area in front of the full-wall screen.
So this house had domes on its roof. The house next door had minarets. The house across the street had Italian towers. Diagonally, there was a Tudor. And on the other side of the house was one with crenellated towers. Nice!
The bee cutout was fairly straight forward. I had to pry out a few short pieces of 2X4s, which left nails hanging down that I couldn't remove because there was already marble on top. I removed a lot of comb, quite a bit of honey, and a load of bees. The owner agreed to let me leave a hive there to gather up all the bees, so I put as much comb as I could in the hive along with attached bees. I couldn't find the queen, which is usual with cutouts, but I figured there was a good chance of getting her to move into the box because of the comb with brood in it, and the box was only inches away from where they'd been - on top of the balcony. Good news I only got a half dozen stings.
Next evening I went back and there was a huge ball of bees hanging where the comb had been. So I suited up again and used a spare helmet to scoop the bees out of the space and dumped them into the hive box. That gave me a much better chance of getting the queen in the hive, because she usually hangs near the center of a clump like that. It was pretty full dark by then so the bees stayed clumped for the most part, after I dumped them in the hive.
Next evening, I went out and all the bees were in the hive, except for a small clump on top of the box. I put a veil on - no suit - and carried the box (bees on top all the way) out to my Jeep and took them out to Joe's new ranch and put them near the fence-line in a remote spot, with the clump of bees still hanging on to the top of the hive. I am anxious to go out there again (probably Saturday) and make sure they are doing OK.