JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — This isn't your typical construction project at the Florida Theatre.
Anyone walking through Downtown Jacksonville Sunday morning may have seen or heard the buzz at the theatre, as crews extracted thousands of bees living in their wall.
Florida Theatre President Numa Saisselin had to call experts for the extraction.
“I really didn't think when I woke up a week ago that I would be standing here talking about the Florida Theatre and a hive of bees,” he said.
A bee colony that's done more than take over a wall in the nearly 100-year-old theatre, but has gotten more aggressive when protecting their hive.
“People were starting to get stung as we loaded shows in and out of the theatre. And that kind of elevated this to a different level of concern,” Saisselin added.
The beekeepers of Bee Friends Farms worked for hours Sunday morning trying to save the bees. When they actually saw through the wall of the Florida Theatre, the hive was bigger than what they expected.
“It's expanded two feet wider and it's expanded three or four feet longer,” said Paul Sifton, a beekeeper for Bee Friends Farm.
He believes they rescued anywhere from 20,000 to 25,000 bees, keeping as much of the hive intact as possible to relocate the bees' home to a new address.
“There's some honeycomb in there. That would be, geez, it could be 20 to 30 years old,” Sifton said.
With the successful bee extraction, the theatre didn't have to postpone any shows.
However, the Florida Theatre plans to put the spotlight on the honey harvested from the bees at their ball in mid-May.