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Safety Harbor Removing Hive To Avoid Being Stung

Tribune photo by STEPHEN THOMPSON

Professional beekeeper Ken Stack builds a cage and goes up in a cherry picker to put it over a beehive before removing it from a tree.

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By STEPHEN THOMPSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 23, 2008

SAFETY HARBOR - Guess what the buzz is on Oak Haven Drive.

A massive beehive has taken shape in a tree, roughly 50 feet in the air, during the past several months, and city officials decided to have it removed.

Enter professional beekeeper Ken Stack.

Stack today made preparations to move the hive to Quail Hollow in Pasco County.

He built a cage with roll-down screen flaps and, from the perch of a public works cherry picker, put the hive in it. Stack said he is going to leave the hive-in-cage contraption in the tree until Friday, then lower it to the ground using a hoist and tackle and transport it.

This way, he said, the bees, over the course of a couple of days, can get acclimated to their new environs before their forced exodus.

The beehive, at 1425 Oak Haven Drive, has not been a problem per se, said neighbors and city officials. No children have been stung; there have been no reports of roving swarms.

"It didn't bother anybody," said Bill Van Nortwick, a 70-year-old retired teacher who watched today's operation from a lawn chair across the street, his camera at the ready.

Lori Foynes, a retired 67-year-old cook who lives across the street from the hive, said she wasn't even aware of it until she saw a group of people looking up the tree at it.

Charles Brewer, Safety Harbor's director of public works, described the decision to remove the hive, which is just outside the city's right of way, as proactive. The city didn't want to risk the hive falling on someone – and then getting sued for it.

Said Brad Purdy, the city's spokesman, "We thought we'd take care of it now rather than allow the hive to become bigger and then it gets a little difficult to manage."

Stack said that had the hive been left alone, it probably would have been deserted by the bees in a matter of months. In general, he said, humans and bees can live together, but if a hive forms in a tree on residential property and is lower than 20 feet in the air, he recommends removing it.

Reporter Stephen Thompson can be reached at (727) 451-2336 or spthompson@tampatrib.com.

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