Beekeeper removes swarm of 8,000 bees from downtown Oregon sidewalk

Beekeeper removes swarm of 8,000 bees from downtown Oregon sidewalk



A strange sight confronted citizens in downtown Newberg on the afternoon of May 2 — a moving carpet of thousands of bees, congregated on the sidewalk in front of a boutique store without warning.


Unsure what to do, someone called the police. But who were the police going to call?


A few minutes later, Paul Jellum’s phone rang.


Jellum, a 75-year-old retired educator and enthusiastic beekeeping hobbyist, said he listened as police explained the situation — and when he hung up, he knew what to do: retrieve an errant swarm of bees.



Footage of the subsequent rescue operation near the intersection of Meridian and 1st Street soon showed up on the Newberg-Dundee Police Department’s Facebook page later the same day, drawing comments from Facebook users such as “Thank you bee whisperer!!” and “We must protect our precious bees.”



Another commenter pondered what could have caused so many bees to congregate in one place.



But the truth, Jellum told The Oregonian/OregonLive, is that bee swarms aren’t all that uncommon this time of year, although the location of the May 2 swarm was somewhat unusual.



Jellum explained that existing bee colonies tend to produce a surplus of worker bees in the spring, prompting the colony to produce young queen bees in special “queen cells” inside the hive. The old queen will then ditch her old home — a legion of workers in tow — to build a new colony, leaving the old colony to be ruled by her offspring.



An old queen will typically create multiple queens, with the first one to emerge from her cell killing her sisters before they can hatch, he said. If another queen emerges before she can be killed by her sibling, she’ll try to escape the hive with her own cohort of worker bees to create a new colony, he said. Jellum explained that when this happens, the resulting congregation of bees is called a “secondary swarm.”



Jellum frequently collects swarms that pop up in the Willamette Valley area, and about five years ago gave his contact information to Newberg-Dundee police in the event that they needed help apprehending a swarm.



But when he arrived on the scene of the May 2 swarm, he was surprised to find the bees on the sidewalk.



“When they swarm, they normally find a tree or a bush or a fence post,” he said. “They normally do that for about a day, while some of the bees go out and do a search, trying to find a permanent place.”



Jellum speculated that the bees had tried to land on a nearby sign, but couldn’t hang onto the slick material.



Even so, the process for spiriting the bees away to safety was still the same, he said.



A police officer placed traffic cones around the rescue site as Jellum got down on hands and knees and peered at the mass of more than 8,000 bees. He broke out a small bee box that he uses for transporting swarms and started coaxing the bees inside.



While bees are best known for buzzing through patches of flowers in sunlight, they make their homes in the dark. They naturally congregated towards the gloomy recesses of the bee box, Jellum said.



He added that there was some residual beeswax in the box as well, which further enticed the swarm. Despite the thousands of stingers mere inches from him, Jellum didn’t wear a bee suit, and didn’t get stung during his bee-herding operation.




Paul Jellum said he's been keeping bees for almost a decade.Courtesy of Paul Jellum



Dealing with swarms is typically easier than interacting with beehives, because the worker bees in a swarm are “drunk” off the large amounts of honey they consume before leaving their original hive, he said.



Jellum said that he spotted what looked like a young queen who hadn’t yet bred in the midst of the swarm, leading him to believe the congregation was a “secondary swarm.” Once she was in the box, the urge to follow their queen and a few puffs of strategically placed bee smoke were enough to entice the rest of the bees inside.



The bee rescue went off without a hitch, Jellum said, owing in large part to his near-decade of experience raising bees. He said that he currently maintains about 25 colonies of bees and typically collects three to five swarms every spring.



“You’ve got to have a hobby, to have something to do to keep you busy,” he said. “I find it entertaining and I find it fascinating. And it’s something where you learn something new every day.”



— Tatum Todd is a breaking news reporter who covers public safety, crime and community news. Reach them at ttodd@oregonian.com or 503-221-4313.