North Fort Myers homeowner finds humane way to remove bee hive from yard

Thousands of bees took over a man’s backyard.

But instead of killing them, Walid Boggio decided to save them. He picked up his phone and called an expert to see what could be done.

“I wanted to try to keep them,” Boggio said.

But keeping the bees wasn’t practical and Boggio didn’t want to exterminate them.

So he researched, put his bee hat on and tried to remove them humanely.

“I thought I caught the queen bee, but it wasn’t,” Boggio said.

So he called Marcelo Lang, the owner of Affordable Bee and Critter Solutions. Lang said Boggio did a pretty good job.

“He removed all the brood, he put it in the box. He did everything right, so I was pretty surprised,” Lang said.

WINK News suited up to see how bees are humanely removed.

“I’m used to getting stung anyway, so let’s get this done,” Lang said.

Lang gently scoops the bees out and drops them onto the frames.

Bees don’t like the smell of this almond oil so it helps drive them out, making it easier to find the queen.

Lang looked and looked and eventually found the queen up in the trees which is probably why Boggio couldn’t get to her.

The boxed-up bees get taken to Echo Global Farm in North Fort Myers.

“I rehab them here, all right,” said beekeeper Don Murray “Then I put them in bigger boxes, get them nice and comfortable. And then we put them to work out and pollination contracts, or we put them out in some areas where they’ll produce honey.”

Without bees we wouldn’t have watermelons, oranges and avocados.

Bees pollinate 70% of the most important crops grown to feed 90% of the world.

Without them the food chain would crumble.