On Saturday, June 29, 2019 Kimberley RCMP and Randy Moody of Moody Bee responded to a swarm of bees that was found outside of the Green Door restaurant in Kimberley’s Platzl.
Green Door owner Jaime Gordon explained that her and her business partner live in the apartment building above the Green Door, from which they discovered the swarm.
READ MORE: Honey bees set up BnB in Kimberley chimney
“I walked out to my deck and noticed thousands of insects flying around,” said Gordon. “It was really kind of freaky, but neat at the same time. From my deck I could hear people saying, ‘wasps! Steer clear!’
After about 20 minutes the swarm seemed to settle into one of our trees. We knew we had to deal with it, so we called our pest control friend that lives a block away from us.”
She adds that within five minutes he responded, and immediately identified the insects as honey bees, as opposed to wasps.
“He said they are protected, so he couldn’t do anything,” Gordon said. “[We] did some quick brainstorming and decided to message Krista and Randy Moody, our local bee nerds. Krista was very excited to hear about the swarm, which we found pretty funny.”
Randy Moody and Kimberley RCMP Sgt. Chris Newel responded and assessed the situation - Moody went to retrieve a bee box while Sgt. Newel guarded and watched the swarm.
“Randy put the box over the swarm and Chris shook the tree,” explained Gordon. “Amazingly, 90 per cent of the bees stayed in the box. It was a pretty neat adventure and we were quite entertained by the whole debacle.”
She says that situations like these only happen small towns like Kimberley.
“It felt pretty good knowing that our fellow business owners and the RCMP had our backs and solved the problem so quickly for us,” said Gordon. “We live in a great community; that kind of stuff doesn’t happen in the big city.”
READ MORE: The plight of the honey bee
corey.bullock@kimberleybulletin.com
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