CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It's prime time for honeybees, but their nests can be a nuisance depending on where they settle -- especially when it's a busy parking lot.
NBC Charlotte recently discovered a massive hive outside our station.
We had a bee removal expert come by to relocate the hive to a safer spot and learned it's quite an extensive process.
"So this is a small colony of bees that set up; it was a swarm originally," Jesse Holland told NBC Charlotte.
"What I'm going to do is I'm going to cut the branch, pull the whole colony down as one piece, put it in a box, and then leave the box up there until it gets dark. Then I'll come back and lower the box down and take it home and give it a new home in my apiary," he said.
Holland used smoke and a saw to maneuver the bees where he wanted them. He said the insects had been quite busy over the past few weeks.
"They've got four pieces of comb that are bigger than my hand already," he said.
Holland didn't worry too much about getting hurt in the process, although you could see in the video he was about as close as you could get to bees.
"I mean you can get stung, and some people are allergic and can get anaphylactic shock from it, but for the most part, honeybees are super docile," he said.
"They're not aggressive at all; they're only defensive. So they're only going to defend right around their hive," he added.
Holland said it was crucial to keep the honeybees alive.
"They're pollinators, and they create our fruits and vegetables that we eat every day and help our environment out," he said.
After Holland transports the bees to their new home, he plans to feed them and get them through the winter. And hopefully, by next year, they'll produce honey for him.
By the way, Holland did get stung, but just once.