'Bee Whisperer' Goes Viral, Removes 'Largest Hive' He'd Ever Seen

By Morgan Brantley

Published June 13, 2020 at 11:34am

Everybody has heard of the dog whisperer, Cesar Millan, but how many have heard of Tennessee’s “Bartlett Bee Whisperer”?

David Glover is known around the Memphis area for safely removing honeybee hives from the homes of residents, but unlike an exterminator, he extracts the bees and sends them to live on farms.

Glover has come in contact with some pretty massive hives over the years, but his most recent discovery makes some of the others seem like child’s play.

On Tuesday, the “Bartlett Bee Whisperer” went to a local home awaiting a remodel and discovered more than 30 feet of honeycomb packed inside the walls of the house.

“Over the years I’ve removed some big hives. I even had one go viral, ‘Holy Huge Comb,’ A couple of years ago. Monday I removed the largest hive I’ve ever come across. Coming in at over 30 feet of combs, this was the big one,” Glover wrote on a viral Facebook photo album.

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During the extraction, Glover discovered that there wasn’t just one colony in the large hive; there were two colonies and two queen bees.

“As we were finishing up the removal, another swarm of bees moved in and were trying to move into the house,” Glover told WREG. “So, we were able to capture a second queen in the swarm. So, we left with two complete colonies of bees.”

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After he safely extracted the bees, they were sent off to a local honeybee farm where they would thrive as an important part of Earth’s ecosystem.

“They’re very important,” he said. “Not just to our ecosystem because we like honey, but for agriculture. In 2018, that was worth about $29 billion of added agriculture just from the pollination services. So, it’s very important that these bees in people’s houses get put back out on farms.”

This isn’t the first time Glover’s had a honeycomb discovery go viral. In 2018, the bee whisperer was called to a home in Germantown, Tennessee, after the residents hired an unsuccessful exterminator.

What Glover discovered was much larger than he expected, and at the time, it was the largest hive he’d ever come across.

“This is what I mean by AWESOME. The comb wasn’t overly-attached to the bricks AND this is one of the largest single pieces of comb I’ve ever seen!” Glover wrote in a Facebook post that received more than 2,500 shares.

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture released a report in 2007 echoing similar concerns that Glover had regarding honeybees and their contribution to agriculture.

According to the report, bee pollination of goods like nuts, berries, fruits and vegetables make up nearly $15 billion in the agricultural industry.

So, the next time you have a honeybee infestation inside the walls of your home, consider the positive impact they have on our Earth and reach out not to an exterminator, but to an extractor like “The Bartlett Bee Whisperer.”

Poster Comment:

I was a beekeeper when I lived in Illinois. When I moved to Missouri I could not bring the three hives along. But there was another beekeeper nearby who took them over. I had some really great raw honey.

I have heard of the Horse Whisperer but never the Bee Whisperer.

Colony Collapse Disorder has decimated many bee farms.