Bees live to see another day
“I lost heart, got off the scaffolding and sat down on the ground just to get myself together again. It was just overwhelming," said Heinrich Schimming from HeiniBee.He and his three sons removed two swarms of bees with an estimated 30 000 bees in two weeks from a church’s bell tower.
“I received a call from the Roman Catholic Church in Windhoek about a bee problem. Father Marek Fischer and I met. He said that when he walks into the church every morning, he sees many bees against the church's windows, but no bees outside.”
Heinrich searched for the bees for several days until he noticed some of them on the right-hand wall of the church tower. He then saw that the bees were in the church tower.
“We started planning and realised it would be very expensive because we would have to erect scaffolding, break the wall, remove the bees and rebuild the wall. Father Fischer said we shouldn't worry about the costs because they want to save the bees and that's all that matters. He said we must save every bee.”
Heinrich and his sons, Ferdinand, Brian and Carlos, who are all certified by the Ministry of the Environment, Forestry and Tourism to remove bees, began the work.
“We first built the scaffolding up to six meters, where the bees were. Then we climbed up and broke the wall and removed the swarm of about 15 000 bees. We had to put each honeycomb we cut out on a frame and then in a bucket and lower the bucket down to where Carlos put the cakes in the cupboards. We also sent the bricks that way and Carlos sent us water and everything we needed, washing.”
Heinrich decided to do the work in the evenings from 19:00 to ensure the safety of the neighbours.
“We started at 19:00 to cut down the wall and then at dusk to suck out the bees with a ‘bee vacuum’. We went on YouTube to research how to get the bees up from a hole in the wall and came across the machine and built it. We sucked the bees out, put them in a bucket and sent them to Carlos to put in the cupboards. The extraction, sending down and putting in boxes, all had to happen within two minutes otherwise the bees would suffocate.”
After all the bees were removed, Heinrich noticed that there was another swarm of bees higher up in the wall.
“We had to extend the scaffolding by four meters because the swarm was at nine meters. It was a challenge because the tower became narrower at the top and the scaffolding did not fit. We had to start sawing and welding to make it fit.”
On the tenth day of the bee rescue mission - when everything was finally in place - Heinrich almost gave up.
“You stand up there in the dark with a headlamp on and there are hundreds and hundreds of bees flying around your head and flying against the protective clothing. It was simply too much and I had to get off.”
Down on the ground, Heinrich wanted to give up, but his sons kept encouraging him. “I sat and prayed for more than an hour. I got up, climbed up and for the next three days I did one of the most difficult extractions ever.”
The bees were removed without any problems after two weeks and found a safe home on a plot outside Windhoek.