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The Rice Thresher
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by Leslie Liu thresher editorial staff Upperclassmen aren't the only residents returning to campus as the bee population in the colleges is increasing each year. Food and Housing Maintenance Manager Ken Thompson said it will be October before local beekeepers will be able to come to campus to begin removal of hives from Jones and Sid Richardson Colleges. "According to the beekeeper that came out, we've had a major increase in the amount of bee activity in Houston, and, unfortunately, they decided that some of our buildings seem to be a real good place to build a hive," Thompson said. "We just got through having a large hive removed from Wiess College over the summer," Thompson said. "It was close to the ground so it was real easy to get to. It was approximately 30 pounds of hives and honey that they extracted from it, and they removed a pretty good sized colony of bees." Thompson said F&H workers took out three to four feet of brick underneath the outside window around Wiess rooms 132 and 133 all the way over to the corner next to where there is construction, since the insects are beginning to bother the construction crew. Thompson said as far as F&H can tell, the bees have not come back to Wiess. The walls in Wiess and Jones have three layers of protection from the outside - a brick exterior, an exterior wall and a interior wall. The bees are building hives between the first two layers. It will be more difficult to remove the bee colonies in Jones and Sid since the bee hives are off the ground. Walls of Jones South between the third and fourth floors, and next to Sid windows facing Main Street between the third and seventh floors, are the problem areas. "They won't even be able to start on it until October because there's only a few beekeepers in Houston that actually come and extract the hives and remove the colonies," Thompson said. He said the beekeepers will have to use some sort of rigged window basket to go up and remove the brick and then remove the beehive. "They actually try to trap as many of the bees and the queen as possible because they're not allowed to poison them because they're part of the agriculture," Thompson said. "[You] could actually poison the honey, and that's an agricultural commodity." Thompson said the beekeepers will have to mechanically extract the bees from where the hives are and then take them and set them up in another box to use the bees for a new hive. "The way Sid Rich is built, the window boxes stick out 4 feet, and between the window boxes the architect bricked that in," Thompson said. "It has no physical entrance to the building at all, it's just a window box, but they had to put weep holes in there on the bottom of the brick in order for the water and moisture to get out. Those weep holes are just the right size for the bees to go in and out of real easy, and it's a perfect closed container for them to build their hive in. "So, the architect has built bee boxes all up and down the building," he said. Thompson said the main problem he is facing at Sid until the hives can be removed is making sure residents know that if they open the windows facing Main Street, there's a good chance bees will get in the room. As for Jones, Thompson said bees have been building hives there for quite a few years off and on. The bees leave and then come back a year or two later. F&H said students will not be affected as long as they keep their windows closed.
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