MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WREG) – A ‘bee whisperer’ lived up to his name, remaining cool, calm, and collected when he was swarmed with some 30,000 bees without any protective gear.
David Glover, also known as the Bartlett Bee Whisperer, was called to Thompson Machinery in Memphis, TN, on Friday to remove a colony of honey bees that had taken up residence in one of their excavators.
“They just got the excavator in and are in the process of cleaning it up and rehabbing it, making sure everything’s still functioning. One of the guys dropped the bottom plate off and saw them and said, hey, we’ve got a problem,” Glover told Nexstar’s WREG.
Glover got a look at the bees in the bottom of the excavator and was in the process of bringing his equipment around in his truck when the bees began flying out of the excavator.
He said he didn’t have enough time to put on a face shield if he wanted to save the bees.
“They were in the air, 1000s of them, were spinning like a bee tornado trying to leave, and I pulled out a nucleus box, which is a small hive box with sugar water, so it smells like someplace they want to go, and started praying that the bees would come down.”
He said the bees flew to another excavator, and that’s when he noticed the queen bee on the ground, picked her up, put her in a queen cage, and stood completely still, hoping to lure the bees back.
“And instead of coming to my hand and my arm where the queen was, they landed all over me, and it was like, okay, guys. Here in a second, you are all going to have to back up,” Glover said.
You can see him holding the queen as the bees cover him from head to toe.
“It was actually kind of crazy. It was fun. And once I figured I had the majority of them, I could feel the weight of the bees on my shirt and on my neck and my arms. I didn’t know how many I had until I actually saw the video,” said Glover.
Once Glover put the queen bee in the nucleus box, you can see him shake off the bees, and most of the bees followed the queen into the box.
“If you watch the video to the end, you see a broad band of bees across my shoulder. Um, they would not leave me. So I had one of the guys spray my neck with something called Honey Bandit. It’s a pheromone that the bees don’t like,” he said.
The remaining bees flew off his neck, and even without protective clothing, he was stung only once.
“I had one stinger in the back of my neck. I got 30,000 bees on me. One is not that bad,” said Glover. “It’s pretty cool some days, and that was one of the cooler swarms I’ve done in a long time.”
Glover said most of the bees he captures are given to beekeepers. These bees were donated to Hometown Honey, which has recently lost some colonies.
Last summer, Glover relocated nearly 40,000 bees found in the walls of a Glenview home to Jones Orchard in Millington.
“We’ve got beekeepers who are just starving for bees. They need these in their boxes. Last year, we lost 60% of our bees,” Glover said. “We can’t afford to lose the colony. Every swarm that you find on a tree, a mailbox, or a car, there’s a beekeeper who’s willing to come pick them up. And in the Memphis area, I’d say about 99% of us will come and get them for free.”
