By JOE STEELE, guest columnist

When Gary Bartels texts, “Want a little adventure?” you know there’s going to be some danger and some decisions.

This time, it wasn’t to be a test dummy on new attraction. No, this time he wanted to get rid of a possible honeybee swarm 65 feet in the air, in the path of his zip line.

While inspecting the lines in the morning, guides realized the hum they heard while crossing the Sky Bridge was bees, and they were close! They hightailed it across the lake before getting too close of a look as to where their gathering spot was.

Gary was wondering if my wife and I, zip line guides and amateur beekeepers, wanted to zip out, locate the swarm, remove it somehow, and if we were lucky, establish another hive in our bee boxes.

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We lost our hive over the winter on the property. All of our previous hives had come from bee nucleus colonies (nucs), from Hunter’s Bee Farm or the bee lady in Morgantown. Neither my wife, Bridget, nor I, had any experience with capturing natural swarms, and where I am timid with bees, Bridget dove at the opportunity. One way or another, she would figure it out.

We settled on using our bee suits, a fitted sheet, a huge cardboard box and some bungees. We gathered head zip guide, Janelle Berning, and convinced her she was essential to the mission.

The plan was, the ladies and gear would zip out and up into the treetop, while I would four-wheeler down into the woods under the action. They’d locate the swarm, box or sheet it, lower it to me, and I’d drive it up and out of the deep woods back toward the lodge.

As soon as their feet landed on the platform, the hum of a large swarm was overwhelming. Where there were a few bees only that morning, now the sound and sight of thousands of bees was all around. The swarm was in the bolted-down landing box they were currently standing on. Watching from below as the swirl or agitation grew, I quickly volunteered to ride back for a cordless drill.

By the time I retrieved the drill, they had smoked the swarm calm. The drilling really kicked them back into action, but none made it through any weaknesses in our suits.

The hive being inside the landing box turned out to be a great advantage, as once it was unbolted, Janelle and Bridget were able to slide the fitted sheet beneath it, enclose it all and bungee it up tight. The 50-pound container became a zip line guest just needing an assisted lower. The hive was zipped across the sky bridge, and it was rappelled slowly off the far side of platform 6, landing softly.

I quickly tied down the box and held the raging, humming, bulging, sheet-covered box with one arm and drove the four-wheeler over hills and hollers back to our yard, then drove back for the ladies. Step one, getting the swarm out of the tree and into our yard, was a huge success.

After waiting an hour to calm the swarm and for the skies to darken, we decided to take the lid off our hive frame box, pull away the fitted sheet from the landing box, lift and softly dump it in.

We could feel the great weight of the swarm as it dislodged from the box and landed on the frames, and at that, we rested the landing box on the hive. After smoking them calm again, we left them be for a few hours, then returned and removed the box and put the lid on the hive with a sugar jar. We just hoped the queen liked her new home.

Now a week later, they are still loving their new home and very active.

Cheers — until Gary calls again asking if we need a little adventure in our lives!

Joe Steele is a staff member at eXplore Brown County.