Tawanda Hammond started noticing a few bees a week were getting trapped in her Richmond Road cake shop, buzzing around the front window in an effort to get out.
At first, she chalked it up to them flying inside when the front door opened. But one night, Hammond saw a few hundred bees swarming outside, trying to navigate into a crack in an upstairs window to make their way home to their hive.
The bee problem is the second issue Hammond has faced in half a year: Her former storefront in the Shops at Kristiansand in Norge experienced a pipe burst in January, which prompted her move to the City of Williamsburg.
About two weeks ago, Hammond called Samuel Holliday, the property manager overseeing the building leased by Hammond, WHRO and Chanello’s at 1408 Richmond Road, to have something done about the bee issue.
Holliday immediately called in an exterminator, who pointed out the roughly 20,000 bees lodging under the floorboards were honey bees. The species is commonly known for producing honey, but is also a nationally recognized pollinator, and the exterminator said they should not be killed.
Chuck Holliday has owned the Richmond Road building — where Cakes by Tawanda opened in April — since 2008, and no tenant has ever pointed out a bee issue.
“I’m the only one that is directly under the hive,” Hammond said. “That’s why WHRO hadn’t even noticed it until I brought it to their attention. …”
With the help of a staff member from WHRO, the group was able to track down Lanexa resident Joey Crump, who owns a handyman service but is working to cross over into the bee removal business. Crump also maintains beehives at his home, including a glass hive inside his home, which the bees access through a pipe leading outside.
On Tuesday, Crump went to work removing a section of the floor in WHRO’s space to draw out the bees.
Hammond did not open her shop Wednesday or Thursday while waiting for Crump to complete his work. She hopes to reopen today so she can resume service for passersby, but has been filling orders for cakes in the meantime.
Crump said the hive appeared to have been built about three years ago because some sections of the comb were darker than others, which shows age. Crump pulled sections of comb from the floor and loaded those into a hive box in hopes the bees would follow.
The first night, the bees did not leave their sunken home.
On Thursday, Crump said he believed he had moved the queen into the hive box, and all the bees should have followed suit.
“We won’t move that hive until dark, because all the bees that are out will be back into the hive by dark,” Crump said. “If you move it out in the middle of the day when all the bees are out … they come back to nothing.”
Once the bees have vacated the former hive, Crump will use a bee vacuum to extract any stragglers for safe transport back to his home. Those left behind will seek out another hive to join, Crump said.
“They’re going to be living a good life in the bee yard instead of getting sprayed with some poison,” Crump said. “Without the bees, there’s no pollinating; no eating.”
On June 20, President Barack Obama issued a presidential memo directing the establishment of the Pollinator Health Task Force. The task force will be charged with developing a strategy to protect and recover species of pollinators, specifically honey bees.
“Honey bee pollination alone adds more than $15 billion in value to agricultural crops each year in the United States,” the memo reads. “The continued loss of commercial honey bee colonies poses a threat to the economic stability of commercial beekeeping and pollination operations in the United States, which could have profound implications for agriculture and food.”
The Virginia General Assembly in 2012 established the Bee Grant Program, which provides state-registered beekeepers grant funding totaling $200 per new hive, up to a total of $2,400 per year.
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