‘Aggressive’ bee colony plaguing The Florida Theatre rehomed

Jake Stofan
·2 min read

The Florida Theatre just had a breakup with an unfriendly neighbor: a giant colony of bees.

According to Numa Saisselin, President of The Florida Theatre, tens of thousands of bees had been living in the wall of the building next door for years.

“A couple weeks ago they started to swarm. Their numbers increased and they were getting aggressive,” Saisselin said.

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Saisselin said when he realized the stinging insects were becoming a problem, he contacted Paul Sifton with Bee Friends Farm.

“We get calls from residents quite often about this,” Sifton said.

Sifton and a coworker located the hive using infrared technology and cut away the stucco from the building to remove the hive.

Five hours later, they managed to secure the queen and removed enough honeycomb to fill a five-gallon bucket.

But not before receiving a few battle scars.

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“I got stung a few times and the other fella doing the extraction, he got stung also,” Sifton said.

The 25,000 bees were taken to the bee farm, where they’ll continue to live out their days, while the crew at The Florida Theatre gets back to work now that the threat of being stung is behind them.

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For Sifton, it’s on to the next job.

“We got a call from Maxwell House this morning with the same problem. So, I’ll be going down there to take a look next,” Sifton said.

Saisselin told Action News Jax a few straggler bees are probably going to be around for the next few days as they work to clean up any honey remaining in the wall.

Then, they’ll go off to find a new colony to join.

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