
{"id":2624,"date":"2008-05-16T08:00:58","date_gmt":"2008-05-16T16:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2008\/05\/16\/century-center-buzzing\/"},"modified":"2008-05-19T07:18:08","modified_gmt":"2008-05-19T15:18:08","slug":"century-center-buzzing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2008\/05\/16\/century-center-buzzing\/","title":{"rendered":"Century Center buzzing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/resizedbees1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/resizedbees1.jpg\" alt=\"Beekeepers to the rescue \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Scotty McLean and Kirk Right of McLean Builders load up a bee box full of honeybees from the Century Center. Photo by Kirk Ross.\" align=\"left\" height=\"213\" width=\"160\" \/><\/a><strong><em>by Kirk Ross<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Pardon the pun, but it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take too long last Tuesday for the buzz downtown to get around.<\/p>\n<p>Late Tuesday morning, calls and emails poured into The Citizen offices about a large number of bees swarming next to the Century Center, specifically in the Foster Holly (Ilex x attenuata) on the northeast corner of Main and Greensboro streets.<\/p>\n<p>As thousands of honeybees swirled in and out of the bushes, onlookers did a bit of swarming as well.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was a pretty amazing sight,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Brendan Moore, facilities administrator for the Century Center. He took in the spectacle and the rapid response of the local beekeeping community, but, he said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I did it from afar.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Paul Hellwig, the town\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s landscaping and grounds supervisor, said and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153went running up there.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Hellwig said that in 30 years on the job, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never had to deal with a swarm before. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153On my way, I was thinking, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWhat am I going to do when I get there?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>He called the Orange County Cooperative Extension Service, which directed him to the Orange County Beekeepers Association. He finally reached a beekeeper and very quickly a swarm alert hit the association\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s listserv.<\/p>\n<p>Although he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been told that swarming bees are generally not aggressive, Hellwig decided to close off the sidewalk.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t worried about them stinging anyone. I was more worried that a person on a bicycle or someone jogging would be startled by the bees and try to avoid them and swerve into traffic,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Hellwig said he was impressed by how quickly the beekeepers responded.<\/p>\n<p>Kirk Right said he and Scotty McLean of McLean Builders, who are both beekeepers, got a call about the swarm around 1 p.m. from Mike Sparrow of Sparrow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Plumbing. They grabbed their gear and McLean got a bee box ready.<\/p>\n<p>Right said McLean estimated there were more than 20,000 bees in the swarm. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was a basketball-sized clump,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Right said.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We filled up the box, threw them in the back of the truck and took them out to a place in White Cross. I checked this morning and they were doing fine.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Right estimates that he and McLean were able to get about 80 percent of the bees.<\/p>\n<p>Hellwig said he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been told the rest will likely stay for a little while because the scent of the queen \u00e2\u20ac\u201d now residing in western Orange County \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is still around.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There was a clump about the size of a tennis ball this morning,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Bees tend to swarm this time of year as hives swell in size and become overcrowded. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a natural occurrence and part of the creatures\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 reproductive cycle.<\/p>\n<p>Hellwig said the local beekeepers were very helpful and probably saved the town from having to extract the hive from somewhere higher up on the building should the swarm have found the Century Center a suitable spot for a new home.<\/p>\n<p>For more information, please visit the North Carolina State Beekeepers Association at <a href=\"http:\/\/ncbeekeepers.org\">ncbeekeepers.org<\/a> or the Orange County Beekeepers Association at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theocba.org\">www.theocba.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Kirk Ross Pardon the pun, but it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take too long last Tuesday for the buzz downtown to get around. Late Tuesday morning, calls and emails poured into The Citizen offices about a large number of bees swarming next to the Century Center, specifically in the Foster Holly (Ilex x attenuata) on the northeast&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}