Buildings and grounds crews used a truck with a lift bucket and borrowed beekeeper suits Thursday afternoon to remove a colony of bees swarming in one of the elm trees across Musser Street from the Capitol.
“It was exciting,” said Adam Houle of B&G, who rode the bucket up into the tree, cut the branch the colony was hanging from and put it atop one of the bee boxes provided by the Capitol’s resident beekeeper, Sally Lincoln of the Secretary of State’s office.
He said the bees almost immediately began going down into the bee box lined with honeycombs.
Lincoln said the colony split from a resident hive in a nearby tree. She said the hive splits every year as it gets too big and the new colony moves on to find a new home for its new queen.
Workers in protective gear placed the box with colony swarm atop it on the ground next to the tree. Lincoln said the bees would all go inside as temperatures drop at sunset, and she would collect it later taking the colony to its new home on her Douglas County property.