Saskatoon ‘bee whisperer’ removes huge swarm from heritage home

Hundreds of bees swarmed around Albert Chubak on Friday as he stood in the bucket of a boom lift beside a chimney, 20 feet above the ground.

For the 55-year-old — who was dressed in his white beekeeper’s suit and was armed with a special bee box — this was something he’d done hundreds if not thousands of times before.

Homeowner Raj Randhawa and his family looked up at him from far below, hoping the swarm that took up residence in the chimney of their 112-year-old home on Queen Street could be safely removed and the bees relocated.

It was Randhawa’s daughter Sitara who first noticed the bees on the floor of the family’s computer room several days earlier.

“They were all across the floor and obviously that’s not something you see every day, so I was little worried,” she recalled. “We saw that they started dying on the floor and I was very concerned as to where they were coming from.”

The teenager told her mother what she’d seen, and her father went to look outside. There, he saw the bees buzzing around the top of the chimney.

“So then I did some research and found Albert on Kijiji and he said he’s a ‘bee whisperer,’ ” said Randhawa. “His recommendation was to take a look up there and when he did, he discovered a hive — it’s quite large — and so we’re trying to rescue the bees so they can have a new, safe home and we don’t hurt the environment.”

When Chubak and his friend Bart Nikota went to the home and inspected the chimney flue, they noticed the bees had already been building a comb.

Bart Nikota holds up part of a honeycomb found in the chimney of the Randhawa family home on June 4, 2021. (Lara Fominoff/650 CKOM)

“Luckily, the colony was within two to three feet of the top of the flue,” Chubak said. “And I suspect because there were eggs there still, they were probably building within three, four, five days of arrival. How many? It’s hard to say. The bees that weren’t on comb were still extended quite a ways down the flue.”

He says it’s not uncommon for something like this to happen in Saskatoon at this time of year. The bees are looking for a protected, safe place to go. He’s not sure where they came from; they may have escaped from a beekeeper — or there’s another possibility.

“These were mostly Italians (a common type of honey bee) … In a lot of cases, I find that there are feral colonies that have left another place like a soffit or a tree or some other place,” he said.

“Once they’ve filled it up, the old queen basically lays a new queen. Once that new queen is capped and incubating, the old queen leaves with half of the colony. Her goal is to start another satellite colony and do the exact same thing. In nature, the most successful queens go on and start new colonies.”

Chubak removed the honeycomb filled with honey, placed it into a plastic bag and gave it to the family. Nikota, who’s also a member of the Saskatoon Bee Club, said the comb was new — about the size of an outstretched hand.

“(Bees) find a home somewhere, whether it’s a chimney or a soffit of an old house or a hole in an old tree trunk or even under a deck, anywhere they feel safe,” he said. “They want to be where they don’t have any other predators getting at them.”

Part of the comb that contained eggs was then placed into a small new hive.

Bart Nikota displays the type of bee box Albert Chubak uses to gather the honey bees on June 4. 2021. (Lara Fominoff/650 CKOM)

Once the comb was removed from the top of the chimney, the top was sealed off. However, Chubak had to go back to the home over the next couple of days to remove the bees that had escaped into the Randhawa home through the bottom of the chimney. He said a swarm had again formed on an inside window sill.

“There were probably the equivalent to two open-hand-sized amounts of bees in that window,” he added.

He says unfortunately, some of the bees died in the home, but he also ended up collecting thousands of additional bees before completing the job. The bee expert said he should have gone into the home to make sure the bees weren’t inside, but he wasn’t told they were there either.

“Because we capped the chimney, the bees had no way to get out,” he said. “So any bees that were still alive, they are scouts. They look for any way to get to the outside. So they would have gone to the bottom of the firebox. They got beyond that. They look for light and that’s open air to them. So they go to windows and they stay there.”

He said to his knowledge, no one in the the Randhawa family was stung.

Anyone who finds a bee swarm outside of a building can contact the City of Saskatoon Parks Department at 306-975-3300. According to the Saskatoon Bee Club, the city works with local beekeepers to remove the swarms. But if the swarms are indoors, the city recommends calling an exterminator, something that Chubak hopes to avoid.

The bees he captured were taken to his home where he’ll be checking them for disease and whether there’s a queen inside the bee boxes in the coming days.

“Once you capture a swarm or remove a colony from a home, you need to be vigilant inspecting it to make sure everything is fine,” he explained. “Eggs are only eggs for three days. If after three days you’re inspecting (and) you see eggs, you know that you have a queen. If there’s no queen and no eggs, then you have to go buy a queen and you can introduce her.”

From there, the bees he collected will be sold to new beekeepers who are interested in starting their own colonies.

Urban beekeeping is allowed in Saskatoon, with up to four hives permitted on a residential yard, provided the hives are properly maintained and the bees don’t exhibit defensive behaviour towards those on the property or any public property nearby.

Chubak said he first learned about beekeeping and harvesting honey during high school when he worked for a beekeeper. In 1999 he bought seven empty hives and began learning more about it. He says he now teaches people how to become beekeepers, and has also developed a beginner type of hive that caters to urban lifestyles.

More information on removing urban indoor swarms or starting a bee colony is available here.  More information also can be found on the Saskatchewan Beekeepers Development Commission website.