Cape May House Was Home to 30,000 Bees
A beehive was relocated from a house in Cape May, N.J. after a large hive was found and thought to contain tens of thousands of bees.
Victoria Clayton and her boyfriend Richard White own the circa 1866 house, which was a former bed-and-breakfast, where an expert on bees safely relocated a large wax honeycomb along with the estimated 30,000 bees from an attic crawl space, as reported by NJ.com.
Clayton first noticed an increased number of bees on her property earlier this spring, but knew that honey bees were essential for pollinating her flowers. As time went on more and more bees were seen around the house.
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Eventually Clayton and her boyfriend discovered that the bees were coming from a third-floor vent and that is when they decided to get help.
"This old house just seems to attract wildlife, so it's good that I really love animals," Clayton said, who regularly sees raccoons, possums and hundreds of blackbirds.
They got in contact with Gary G. Schempp of Busy Bees NJ, a honeybee rescue service that helps homeowners and business safely relocate hives in their establishments. Schempp became so obsessed with honeybees that five years ago he sold his pest-control business of thirty years.
Schempp explained that honeycomb was within a crawl space in the attic and had grown a great deal in size. The hive was three feet long and two feet wide and had produced over 25 pounds of honey, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
"A comb this size and this active could have caused huge problems for this structure," he said. "It would have continued to get bigger and bigger inside the walls," Schempp said.
The bees were safely relocated, but Schempp continues to educate homeowners of the import role honeybees play in nature. Schempp explains that they are responsible for pollinating up to a third of domestic crops.
