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Beehive Threat Defused In Safety Harbor

News Channel 8 photo by ERIC HAUSMANN.

Professional beekeeper Ken Stack, 65, removes a massive beehive from an oak tree in Palm Harbor.

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TBO.com Staff Report

Published: January 25, 2008

SAFETY HARBOR – Beekeeper Ken Stack, 65, approached the beehive carefully this morning.

His job: to help Safety Harbor's public works department remove a massive beehive before anyone gets stung.

Today, they transferred the beehive from its home 50 feet up in a tree at 1425 Oak Haven Drive to Quail Hollow in Pasco County.

This was the final step in a process that began on Wednesday. Stack built a cage with roll-down screen flaps and, from the perch of a public works cherry picker, put the hive in it. Stack left the hive-in-cage contraption in the tree until today so the bees could get acclimated to their new environs before their forced exodus.

The beehive has not been a problem in the ten months since it began forming, said neighbors and city officials. No children have been stung; there have been no reports of roving swarms, although Stack estimated 25,000 European and African hybrid bees lived in the hive.

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.

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 contributed to this report.

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