Deja vu...

Today was a good warm day in winter; a high of 80 degrees! It was finally warm enough to do an extensive check on how the bees were doing. The large italian hive got a clean bill of health and was very docile today. I didn't get one sting! The population has clearly diminished as has the brood nest. Anyways, I took off a super, which I thought was empty, so I could fill it with sugar syrup and give it to the russian colony. It took me about 15 minutes to fill the super with 1 1/2 gallons of syrup. In the center frames there was a actually fermenting, recently gathered nectar. Somewhere near here there is a species of plant blooming in mid winter. I went over to the russian hive which I last inspected a couple of weeks ago so I was unsure if it was even alive. They couldn't be more alive. Although there wasn't much activety at the enterence, the inside was buzzing with activety! They were very low on honey stores and actually didn't have much more that a few ounces of capped honey. What honey/nectar they did have was black as tar and most of it was stored in brood cells. It makes sence given the queen isn't laying very many eggs when the day length is shortening. I put the super full of nectar and sugar syrup when the man alowing me to keep bees on his property walked up and told me about a hive in a water meter. "I found it the other day jogging, did your bees swarm?"he asked. I replied that there was never a population drop large enough to indicate a swarm had ocurred. He kept telling me it was a beehive and as much as I didn't believe there was a subterranian hive of bees, I looked into it. We walked about 60 yards up a street and stopped at a tree. There was a group of bees ontop of what looked like a city water meter. I told him they were definately bees, but not my bees. The russians I had were almost a jet black, these bees has tan, italian colored bodies. The bees were all fanning and flying in and out of a slot at the end of the meter and in the little key hole at the other end. Thus, I come to the name of the post, it was just last week I was told about a hive someone wanted removed. The good news about this hive is if they pass the aggressian test they should be relatively easy to capute compared to the hive 25 feet up. First, I'll have to call the city to see if they'll even let me do it given the hive is nesting in city property. We'll see how it goes.