Rosslyn Chapel is haven for bees

[Jon]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8594724.stm

This story is interesting for the number of misconceptions about bees.
They must think the bees are hanging out somewhere waiting to return when the restoration work is finished.

I liked this quite as well:

'The hive has been sent to local beekeepers in an attempt to identify the type of insect that made them.'

[Trikin Dave]

Late addition to this thread, but I've only just joined the forum. I was the "local beekeepers". As you'd expect, it was bog-standard honeybee comb, since the bees died out about 8 years previously (probably varroa) it was riddled with moth, but I still managed to extract a block of wax from it.
The same article appeared in quite a few newspapers with the same photographs. For 13 years there was scaffolding giving tourist access around the roof of the chapel so it was possible to get quite close to the hive entrance, it was only taken down last autumn; there was also a notice while the hives were occupied warning the punters of the risk.
Cheers,
Dave.

[HuntingRoss]

Having just explained to my daughter about the' Roslin bees' I thought I'd do a quick search.

I came across the BBC story then this forum....the BBC story lives up to their usual poor standard and factual nonsense.

As Dave states in his post, the Bees were alive and well after the canopy was erected and maybe varroa got them, but the talk amonst the locals at the time was the bees were 'freaking' the visitors to the Chapel and talk was 'there was murder afoot'.....oddly the bees vanished shortly after.

Personally, from the talk at the time, it was not varroa.

Oh and for the BBC and the record, the locals knew it was an ancient hive before they 'had to take it down'.