A buzz on the Plaza

Dennis J. Carroll | For The New Mexican

9/5/2008 - 9/6/08

About 8,000 "very gentle bees" got an official city escort through the Fiesta crowd and off the Santa Fe Plaza on Friday night after a beekeeper vacuumed them out of a hollow tree along Lincoln Avenue.

The bees had taken up residence there, making honey and doing other bee things for about the past month.

"It all worked out really nicely," said south-side Santa Fe beekeeper, Eric Follingstad.

Follingstad had been summoned downtown Thursday by a curator at the New Mexico Museum of Art who had feared that if the bees were not removed humanely by an understanding beekeeper, a city bee SWAT team would eventually attack the tree and kill the Apis mallifora unhumanely.

Follingstad said city parks Director Fabian Chavez approved the beeman's plan to remove the hive and the bees by opening the honey locust tree with a chain saw and vacuuming out the bees. Follingstad then carefully — a word often associated with bee removal — placed the hive, honeycomb and bees into his bee transporter in a bee-friendly pickup on Friday afternoon.

The beekeeper and Chris Ortiz of the city Parks Division waited patiently until about 8:30 p.m., after sunset, when the bees had settled in for the evening, to drive the boxed-up bees through the crowd that had gathered around the Plaza for the music, food and camaraderie of Santa Fe's big annual community celebration.

Police officers had been alerted but weren't needed for the brief Desfile de las Abejas down Palace Avenue.

Ortiz said the city agreed to the move because "this could become an issue later on" if the bee colony expanded.

Even though hundreds of people had walked by the tree during the day, apparently no one had been stung, Follingstad said.

"I noticed about 300 people go by, and no one seemed to notice, even though the bees would fly directly past their faces," Follingstad said.

"I thought they were flies," said Alfred Flores, a vendor working about seven booths north of the tree.

Follingstad said other vendors along Lincoln, some of their booths butting up against the tree, were a little worried when they realized what was going on. "They complained because they didn't know what to expect," the beekeeper said, noting the chain saw noise also wasn't the most welcome sound in the morning.

The bees had managed to build a hive in the tree through a quarter-size hole in the trunk, a few feet or so above the sidewalk. Follingstad said it apparently wasn't the first time a hive had made a home in the tree. "The bees seem to know," he said. "It smelled like home to them."

The beekeeper carved a 21/2-foot long, 8-inch-wide chunk in the tree so he could extract the bees and their home, and take them to the safety of his bee yard on the south side of town.

Follingstad said the bees are mild-mannered European honey bees, not the more aggressive African bees.

As far as one could tell, no bees were injured in the incident.

Contact Dennis Carroll at dcarroll@sfnewmexican.com.