But when Tom Bugas, assistant operations director for the Portland Center for the Performing Arts heard about the swarm, he got on the phone.
In short order, Brian Lacy of LiveHoneybees.com showed up with a ladder and a homemade bee sucking contraption. Lacy said this swarm--and many just like them that he’s moved in the past 42 years of beekeeping--was the swarm in a holding pattern. He estimated the hive at about 2,500 bees.
The swarm, with the queen at its center, had already sent out scouts to look for a promising hole in a tree or a cavity in a house.
“The workers realized that the hive had grown too large and they say, ‘We’ve got to divide--it’s how they multiply their species,’’ Lacy explained. “Mammals mate, bees swarm.”
After a new queen is born, the bees deny her food so she’s small enough to fly, he said. Eventually, the bees fly away to a temporary site, in this case, the dusky brown bricks on the side of the concert hall on Southwest Main Street.
“This is an unusual place for them to land,’’ Lacy said. “Usually they’ll choose something that’s not so vertical.”
Eventually, using a converted leaf blower engine, a plastic bucket, a long vacuum hose and a 10-foot pole, Lacy was able to lower the sucking end of the vacuum over a parapet wall on the roof to remove the bees.
He then dumped them in a box, which he left overnight. That will allow the remaining bees on the wall--and any that were out house-hunting--to meet up with the swarm.
“They will know that the queen is in the cardboard box and they will join the swarm,’’ Lacy said. “In the morning, the box will be filled to the brim with bees.”
UPDATE: Brian Lacy returned to the building Thursday night to recover the bees. Some of them remained clinging to the building and will probably expire, said Tom Bugas of PCPA.
-- Stuart Tomlinson