Courthouse was buzzing…again

For the fourth time in the past twelve months, a swarm of honey bees was captured on the stone wall near the Breathitt County War Memorial at the Courthouse.

The latest swarm was found on the afternoon of Wednesday, May 7, and was estimated at ten to fifteen thousand bees.

The massive swarm of bees caught workers' attention just before 1:00 p.m. last Wednesday when they started coming into the open windows of the courthouse.

“We noticed a honey bee in the office, and then there were more,” Chris Friley said.  “We looked outside and saw a huge swarm.”  

Friley and others contacted several apiarists in the area to come and collect the swarm.  

Lloyd Bach, an experienced beekeeper from Rousseau, and Richard Knarr calmed the bees using sugar water and collected the bees in a new hive body or box for transport.

Bach told passersby that Knarr was interested in getting started in beekeeping, and he was helping him capture his first hive.

The latest bee migration is the fourth swarm to be taken from this location since March of 2024. 

According to Amanda Skidmore, Kentucky State Apiarist, swarms can be a natural part of the colony’s reproductive process.  When the hive has too many bees and becomes overcrowded, a portion of the hive leaves with the old queen to form a new colony at a new location, and a new queen is hatched at the old hive.  

Why the bees continue to congregate on the stone wall near the Breathitt County War Memorial is unknown.

Bach said, as he used a small brush to direct the bees into the new hive, that collecting the swarm was as simple as finding the queen.  However, locating the queen among a swarm this large is not easy.  It took Bach and Knarr more than three hours to gather the estimated 15,000 bees.  Knarr left the courthouse with a new hive of honey producers sometime about 4:30 p.m.

No word had been received on the health of the new hive.