Gigantic beehive in Penn Brewery wall

[TimT]

For the love of beer.... and the love of bees:

http://boingboing.net/2014/05/22/brick-wall-collapses-to-reveal.html

A brick wall at the Penn Brewery, not far from where I work, collapsed today during an attempt to get to a beehive said to have occupied space behind it "for years." No-one was hurt, and the local news reports that the bees are fine, too. Some of their honey may even find its way into a brew, if it's found to be of sufficient quality. I walked over and grabbed these photos of their handiwork.

Wonder if the bees were filching some of that sweet, sweet malt sugar. I'm told insects love breweries.

 

[Mardoo]

Thing of beauty! What an extraordinary hive!!! Love the tubelike structures.

 

[Whiteferret]

Bees are always hanging around when I'm brewing they love the smell of mash and wort. I've found them in the bottom of the kettle a couple of times.

 

[TimT]

Nutrient!

Do you brew outside? I've never had that problem with our bees. When I'm doing stuff with wax - yep, sometimes.

I carefully made my burnt honey bochet at night early last week to avoid the possibility of our bees flocking into the house at the honey/caramel/toffee smells; whacked it in the fermenter with some yeast and went to bed, and next morning I found - not bees - but ants crawling all over it, attracted to the toffee smells the yeast was now throwing off in its ferment.

 

[TimT]

I've heard stories about bakeries moving kilns and finding gigantic colonies of cockroaches living in their shade, lapping up the stray bits of flour and water and dough that came their way. Apparently insects can be a real aid to wild yeast fermentation and open fermentation - they hop from barrel to barrel of sweet must, spreading wild yeast all over the place, and occasionally carking it in one of the barrels and providing nutrient (nitrogen) for the yeast.

If the bees have been making malt honey, I wonder what it tastes like? They suggest in that article some honey might be used in a one-off Penn Brewery brew....

 

[Mardoo]

I heard the brewmaster (mustmaster???) at Moonlight Meadery talk about a large honey spill they had and local bees came and finished off 10's of kilos, IIRC.

 

[SJW]

In spring I get bees around when boiling.

 

[Dave70]

We've got a paper wasp nest about the size of half a football near the roller door at work.
I can take a photo if anyone's interested.
Not as impressive as that hive though.
And wasps are pretty useless.
Except for stinging, I guess.

Probably wont bother with a photo..

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Grubs are good fishing bait.

 

[mmmyummybeer]

Wow what a awsome nest and a fun job that's going to be in relocating, that hives huge. Its kind of a pity to move it, if there not bothering anyone it would be cool to have it there to see. Put a honey beer on tap and have it as a feature. But I guess the have to fix the wall and who knows with politics there's probable some council regulation that would then class them as bee keepers and make them remove it anyway.
I brew in the garage and quite often have a friendly inquisitive bee come for a look when boiling. I do try to keep them out of the wort though.

 

[TimT]

Everyone knows someone who has a story about bees living in their walls or ceiling or shed. They're mostly harmless - though some folks might want the bees gone because they're allergic to bee stings, for instance. I guess they could cause damage to the architecture sometimes, if honey starts to drip through the walls (though mostly bees are super-careful about that sort of thing).

At any rate it's good the hive is being moved rather than destroyed - destroying a hive creates a whole new lot of problems: all of a sudden you've got a heap of dead meat in your walls (the bees and their larvae) and honey, which is going to attract a lot of predators....

 

[Greg.L]

Bees love the open fermenters used for red wine, many hundreds drown in there. When picking grapes you have to accept you will get a few stings. Grapepicking isn't a good job if you have bee allergy.
Some have suggested that with so many dead bees in red wine, anyone with bee-sting allergy should avoid red wine. you would be amazed how many insects get into wine.

 

[TimT]

Yeah we bought a couple of boxes of grapes a couple of months ago (I dunno the type.... dark ones, anyway) from a roadside stall to use to make some house wine; bees all over them.

 

[Bribie G]

My Rhodesian mate and I are always puzzled when mainstream Australians say "lets go out for a few bees"

I think they are trying to say "beers" as in bee-urs.

 

[manticle]

We've got a paper wasp nest about the size of half a football near the roller door at work.
I can take a photo if anyone's interested.
Not as impressive as that hive though.
And wasps are pretty useless.
Except for stinging, I guess.

Probably wont bother with a photo..

Paper wasps are great. Send me any dead ones you find and if the dermested beetle larvae don't turn them into dust, I'll turn them into a drawing.

 

[Online Brewing Supplies]

My Rhodesian mate and I are always puzzled when mainstream Australians say "lets go out for a few bees"

I think they are trying to say "beers" as in bee-urs.

Far cough

 

[Dave70]

Paper wasps are great. Send me any dead ones you find and if the dermested beetle larvae don't turn them into dust, I'll turn them into a drawing.

Activity around the hive seems to have slowed so I'm guessing they are in the incubation stage.
I'l hack the nest off and place it in a shoebox. I'm unsure of the gestation period, so if you receive a package that emits a droning noise, you may want to put on a hat and have some Mortein close to hand.

 

[TimT]

We had to kill a bunch of wasps in a wood pile at the back of our garden. Twice. (First time didn't work - turns out a kettle full of boiling water isn't nearly enough).About 30 litres of hot soapy water did the trick in the end - wasps clean one another thoroughly and if one has poison it gets passed on to other wasps. Sorry, this probably doesn't help as you can't pour 30 litres plus of hot soapy water into a wasp nest above your door.... but anyway, when we dug the nest up a day after we found tonnes of little wasp larvae; if they hadn't been soaked through with detergent we would have tossed them all to the chooks.

 

[mash head]

That's a big colony, they would have been pretty pissed when the wall was removed. Even though I have worked in the apiary industry I hate being stung, the workers who pulled that wall down would have coped it if they weren't wearing the right gear.

 

[Flaminghedgehog]

I have to drape a spare bit of terrylene over my pot during the boil to keep bee's from suiciding in the wort. They hover around (and sometimes land on) the grain bag while I am hoisting it as well.