Bee specialists Iam Hedendal and Mark Snellman use a lift to reach a 50-pound hive that had established itself in a black olive tree in Ocean Ridge. Photos by Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Tao Woolfe
Imagine that you are the queen of a large, peaceful, productive colony and one day, two men in white mesh hats show up wielding sticks and cans of smoke.
These giant, two-legged invaders are obviously hell-bent on destroying your village. You have to think fast. Do you fly away or stay and fight?
On this Monday afternoon in an Ocean Ridge backyard, the queen bee, and all her guards and handmaidens, choose to fight. The insects, as many as 40,000 of them, swarm the men and the cherry-picker crane carrying them 30 feet up to a black olive tree.
The buzzing is intense, like a million tiny kazoos. The air is thick with the defenders’ gold and black bodies.
Hedendal prepares the smoke used to calm the bees during the relocation process.
The panicked bees have no way of knowing that the men — Iam Hedendal and Mark Snellman, of the Florida Honey Bees company — are actually here to save the colony.
“When the bees smell the smoke, they think their home is on fire,” Hedendal says. “In the beginning I felt really bad about destroying the hive. I still do, actually, but I’m taking them to a better, safer place.”
Once aloft in the cherry picker, Hedendal removes the 50-pound hive from the tree by cutting the supporting branches. Back on the ground the two men carry the hive across the yard to a shady spot and then lay it gently on the ground.
The bees, which followed the hive into the shade, quickly discover wooden boxes Hedendal created earlier as temporary quarters. Inside are irresistible commodities: the queen and big honey-covered chunks of hive.
The Florida Honey Bees company was called in after landscapers told the homeowners association that they would not prune trees near such a big, active beehive.
The association, and the homeowner whose yard was home to the hive, split the removal costs. Hedendal declined to say how much he was making on this job, but said the range for such services is $400 to $2,000.
“Once you understand the bees, it’s amazing what you can get them to do,” Hedendal says. “It’s a Zen experience. Very much in the moment.”
As if on cue, the swarming bees turn docile, taking turns flying into the boxes, single file, to eat honey and serve the queen.
Queen and her subjects
As the chaos turns orderly, Hedendal, 42, takes the opportunity to educate about his favorite creatures.
“Most of these worker bees only live three to five weeks,” he says. “The queen can live three to five years.”
The queen is amazing, Hedendal says, and as he talks he is looking for her amid the hundreds of bees now crawling across pieces of comb dripping with honey, and strapped by rubber bands onto small wooden partitions.
On her maiden voyage from the hive, she flies a half mile to a mile up into the sky where she mates — while in flight — with 10 to 15 drones from neighboring colonies. Most queens make this flight only once, Hedendal says, but sometimes, if the hive is threatened, a queen will fly off with her colony in search of a new home.
Before the mating flight, her highness has the nasty job of killing all the potential rival queens before they hatch. It is the only time the queen uses her stinger.
A slice of honeycomb.
Most of the time, though, the queen lives a quiet, peaceful, highly organized life at home, munching royal jelly (specialized food for the queen) and laying eggs.
The queen fertilizes eggs using sperm from her many suitors. That sperm is stored in her spermatheca, a special abdominal cavity organ only she possesses. This store of fertilized sperm, which lasts throughout her lifetime, can be used to fertilize millions of eggs.
By contrast, the other bees have short and sometimes brutal lives.
The male drone bees die after mating and the female worker bees die after stinging an attacker, Hedendal says. The males that survive the mating flight, but do not connect with the queen, are forced out of the hive by the females in the fall. They have, after all, served their purpose.
Hedendal, who is a chef by trade and owns a trade show sales business, took up honeybee removal services in 2020 when COVID closed the convention centers. He says he saved one hive and found the experience fascinating and deeply addictive.
“One hive was not enough,” he says. “It went from hobby to passion to obsession.”
He has since removed more than 400 hives, found new homes for the rescued bees with other beekeepers, and kept about 100 hives himself, which he keeps at his property and on neighboring properties in Delray Beach’s Lake Ida neighborhood.
By cutting branches, Hedendal and Snellman remove the entire hive without killing the bees.
Thrills outweigh the stings
In Florida, commodity crops like blueberries, watermelons, cucumbers and onions would produce little to no fruit if it were not for the honeybee (Apis mellifera), according to the Florida Department of Agriculture’s website.
Honeybee populations have dwindled as civilization has encroached and pesticide use has increased.
Hedendal says homeowners who discover a hive on their property are not always aware they have a choice between saving the bees or killing them.
“A large percentage of pest control companies go right to the killing,” Hedendal says. “Professional hive removal experts, however, will remove the hive and allow the bees to live out their lives in a sanctuary yard.”
Snellman, Hedendal’s friend and colleague, is a landscaper by trade. He says he, too, has been drawn inexorably into the world of bees.
“The thrill of having to get that hive down is what keeps me coming back,” says Snellman, 29, who moved to Boynton Beach from Connecticut during the COVID pandemic.
Hedendal sells honey and honeycomb products at local green markets while he waits for more assignments to save honeybees. He’s building a website for his business, but now relies on referrals.
Many times, Hedendal can remove hives without getting stung, but other days he’s not so lucky.
“I’ve gotten stung, but I’ve gotten used to it,” Hedendal says. “If you’re patient and calm, the bees will teach you everything.”
Florida Honey Bees can be reached at 561-572-6202.
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