By Gillian Graham
Staff Writer

Chainsaw in hand, Mike Knight walks briskly to the fallen tree near his Dayton home.
Kneeling next to a large fallen limb, he peels back a plastic sheet covering its jagged edge and puts his face close to the hole before turning around with a smile.  
‘They’re alive,” he says.
Knight is excited because the colony of honeybees he found survived another cold night in the tree, which was partially cut down more than a week ago. Knight says he doesn’t know who was cutting down the 200-year-old oak tree, but he heard they stopped after several bee stings.
After Knight wandered over to the tree and found the hive, he asked co-workers if they knew anyone who might want to save them. Without much trouble he found beekeepers – including a neighbor on Waterhouse Road – who arranged for master beekeeper Erin Forbes to rescue the bees Saturday morning.
While waiting for Forbes to arrive to bring the hive back to her bee yard in Portland, Knight and neighbors Anne and Charles Wilkinson move smaller limbs from around the hive. The Wilkinsons have kept bees for the past two years and are members of the York County Beekeepers Club.
While her husband maneuvers a small tractor close to the hive, Anne Wilkinson kneels close to the hive to check on the bees. They used plastic to wrap broken end of the limb so the bees wouldn’t be too cold as temperatures dipped close to freezing, she says as she peeks at the bees.
Forbes soon arrives at the site of the fallen tree, bouncing out of her truck and across the street to the bees. She unwraps the hive before pulling out a camera to take photos of her newest bees. They honeycombs are partially exposed – bright golden yellow under the early morning sun – and bees cluster together at their base.
With that, Forbes prepares the bees for their ride to Portland. She waves smoke into the ends of the log before packing it closed with white cloth. She says the smoke masks the bees’ ability to create a panic alarm for each other.
With Anne Wilkinson’s help, Forbes secures the cloth in place with blue straps before Knight cuts the log close to the end of the hive. Forbes says she wants to take as little of the log as possible with her and needs a clean cut so she can stand the hive upright.
Saw buzzing, Knight cuts through the end of the limb, dirt pouring out as the first cut goes through. The inside of the log is full of dark soil, baby mice and large white grubs. Forbes pokes at the dirt with a stick to determine the hive starts further up.
“Whatever they don’t need we don’t want,” Forbes says.
Knight cuts again, this time wearing a beekeeper’s hood to protect him against the few bees buzzing around. Within minutes, ends of the combs poke through the dirt and Forbes brings more smoke to calm the bees before packing the opening with cloth.
After lifting the hive up and out of a pile of limbs, Knight and Charles Wilkinson secure it to the tractor and drive it across the street. With guidance from Forbes, they lower the hive into the bed of the pickup truck.
The bees have a 30 percent chance of surviving in the bee yard, compared to a 5 percent chance in a fallen tree limb, Forbes says. Back in Portland, she will stand the limb upright and place a box of honey on top of the opening. As the bees use up their food throughout the winter, they will move up into the box, allowing her to eventually remove the log, she said.
Forbes, who has 100 bee colonies, says it is not extremely uncommon to find honeybees living in trees – it is their natural habitat – but has only rescued hives from trees a couple times before. She estimates the hive has 15,000 to 20,000 bees, including the queen.
Knight says he is happy to see the bees find a new home, though he may come to miss the benefits of having a large hive next to his garden. He says he had an “incredible” crop in his vegetable and flower gardens this year, likely because of the neighborhood bees.
For more information about honeybees in Maine, go to the Maine State Beekeepers Association Web site, www.mainebeekeepers.org.

Staff Writer Gillian Graham can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 213.