By Danielle Kutchel
There’s a buzz around Hampton Park, and it’s not just the anticipation of the long-awaited upgrade of Hallam Road.
Workers investigating an abandoned house near the corner of South Gippsland Highway and Evans Road, which is set to be demolished to upgrade the intersection, discovered two active bee hives – complete with 6000 busy bees – in the walls of the property.
A beekeeper was duly called to safely collect and rehome the family of pollinators.
Ben Moore, from Ben’s Bees, said it looked like the stripy invertebrates had been inside the weatherboard property for a long time.
“Judging by the colour of the wax I’d say at least five or more years, but realistically I’d say 10 because these combs were very black, which says to me that it’s very old.”
Interestingly, it looked like the bees had used their location to their advantage, feasting on leftovers from the nearby tip.
“Someone must have thrown out some strawberry syrup or topping in the tip. All of a sudden, the bees have gone ‘there’s not many flowers around, we need to bring some food in’, and they collected the topping and mixed it with their honey,” Mr Moore explained.
After being dosed with smoke to “chill out” the bees, Mr Moore pulled the weatherboards off the property to expose the hives and put the combs into a Langstroth hive for management. Complicating matters was the presence of asbestos in the roof, close to the hive. Nearly 8kg of honey and honeycomb was also extracted, with the honeycomb set to be reintroduced to the hive to assist with its growth in the future.
Mr Moore said he will ensure the bees are healthy and disease-free before being introduced to a new home in the Yarra Valley, where he expects them to pollinate berries.
He said it was one of the most interesting hive removals he had been called to manage, adding to an impressive list of achievements.
“The weirdest one I’ve seen was in a red light at an intersection … and I’ve done speakers, and trolleys at shopping centres over the years.”
The Hallam Road Upgrade will add a new lane in each direction for 1.2km between Ormond Road and the South Gippsland Highway in Hampton Park.
Site preparations are continuing with temporary bans are in place for drivers travelling onto South Gippsland Highway from Hallam Road and for traffic turning onto Hallam Road from South Gippsland Highway.
Major works to build the extra lane on Hallam Road will begin in mid-2019 and are expected to be completed in 2020.
