Pat Rayne of Paola, who says beekeeping is his hobby, gathers a swarm of honey bees into a box on Wednesday outside of the old North School in Paola. A group of teachers at Head Start preschool called Rayne because they were afraid the bees may harm the children. (Brian McCauley / Bmccauley@miconews.com)
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Beekeeper to the rescue at Paola Preschool
By Brian McCauley, bmccauley@miconews.com
Joyce McIntire, the lead teacher at the Head Start preschool in Paola, had to do a double take when she glanced out the window of one of the classrooms in the schoolhouse at 302 N. Oak St. on Tuesday.
What looked like heavy rain actually turned out to be a swarm of bees upon closer inspection. Concerned for the safety of the children, McIntire and her coworkers carefully watched the bees until they disappeared.
The hum of the hovering honey-makers wasn’t gone for long, though, as the teachers spotted them again on Wednesday, this time gathered on a fence next to a parking area on the building’s west side.
“We didn’t want to kill them,” said Theresa Mays of Miami County family services.
So, instead of an exterminator, the coworkers called Pat Rayne, a Paola man who does a little beekeeping as a hobby with his son, Spencer.
After stepping into a beekeeper suit, Rayne went right to work. He pulled some screens out of a box and laid them beneath the group of bees before shaking the fence and watching them tumble down.
It didn’t take long before he had almost all of the bees contained in the box, and the remaining stragglers were being subdued with smoke from burning cardboard that is designed to calm them.
As long as he got the queen, Rayne knows he’ll be fine. He said the group of bees likely was swarming in search of a new home, and they always follow the queen. When he gets them back to his farm off New Lancaster Road, he plans to feed them a syrup made from sugar water in the hopes that the queen will soon start producing more bees.
Rayne estimated that there was about a pound and a half of bees on the fence, but in order to harvest honey from them, he’d like to see the colony grow to about 10 times that size.
Early Head Start home visitor Lisa Coleman is just happy the bees are away from the school.
“A lot of our children would have tried to touch them,” she said.
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What looked like heavy rain actually turned out to be a swarm of bees upon closer inspection. Concerned for the safety of the children, McIntire and her coworkers carefully watched the bees until they disappeared.
The hum of the hovering honey-makers wasn’t gone for long, though, as the teachers spotted them again on Wednesday, this time gathered on a fence next to a parking area on the building’s west side.
“We didn’t want to kill them,” said Theresa Mays of Miami County family services.
So, instead of an exterminator, the coworkers called Pat Rayne, a Paola man who does a little beekeeping as a hobby with his son, Spencer.
After stepping into a beekeeper suit, Rayne went right to work. He pulled some screens out of a box and laid them beneath the group of bees before shaking the fence and watching them tumble down.
It didn’t take long before he had almost all of the bees contained in the box, and the remaining stragglers were being subdued with smoke from burning cardboard that is designed to calm them.
As long as he got the queen, Rayne knows he’ll be fine. He said the group of bees likely was swarming in search of a new home, and they always follow the queen. When he gets them back to his farm off New Lancaster Road, he plans to feed them a syrup made from sugar water in the hopes that the queen will soon start producing more bees.
Rayne estimated that there was about a pound and a half of bees on the fence, but in order to harvest honey from them, he’d like to see the colony grow to about 10 times that size.
Early Head Start home visitor Lisa Coleman is just happy the bees are away from the school.
“A lot of our children would have tried to touch them,” she said.