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By K. Reka Badger
Bee Charmer Debbie Daily at work high above the ground at Hans Christian Andersen Park in Solvang, attempts to remove a swarm of bees from a dead and soon to be cut down oak tree.
While observers fret, poised for flight, a rosy-cheeked woman carefully searches trees, chimneys and hidden corners for signs of feral bees. 

Drawing close to the telltale buzz, tools at the ready and a quiet smile on her face, Debby Daily prepares to rescue another swarm of her beloved bees. Dressed in jeans, boots, heavy shirt and long gloves, Daily goes about her delicate business with calm assurance. Only the ventilated hat fitted with a heavy black veil reveals the potential danger inherent in her work. 

"I remove swarms from infested structures," Daily admits with a chuckle, "but I don't have a white suit like other professionals. I look kinda' funky, but I'm up in trees a lot and climbing over jagged limbs, and I'm afraid if I get one, I'll thrash it." 

Probably the only person in the area who specializes in removing unwanted hives, Daily answers calls at all hours and rarely takes a day off. She relocates bees to pollen-rich spots, markets a line of local honey and spreads the word about the wonder of bees, all under the banner of her aptly named business, Santa Ynez Valley Bee Charmer.

Daily's unusual vocation takes her all over the Valley, and sometimes beyond, where she answers distress calls from homeowners, arborists and pest company workers who've discovered thriving hives in unexpected places. Wherever bees have set up shop, in a wall, boat or empty wine barrel, she deftly gathers them into swarm traps and slides the open containers into her car.

"It's just amazing," Daily declares. "The bees make me look very smart, but it's not me, it's the bees that know what to do. The trick is to do your thing quickly and move on." 

Daily chooses unlidded traps for her rescue efforts, because a large swarm confined in a closed container is likely to stress, overheat and drown in its own fluids. "I've had to learn everything as I go," she says, "so I learned this the hard way."

 Each rescue presents its own circumstances, and Daily must gauge the location and condition of the bees before deciding on a course of action.

"Smoking simulates a forest fire and tells them to move," she explains, "so I don't smoke them when they're already in a swarm. If they're clinging to a branch, I just snip the branch, put them in the trap and walk them to the car.

"Once you have the queen," she continues, "any stragglers will just fly right in there. They'll stand on the edge and wave their wings and give off a citrus-like smell (pheromones), and any [related] bees in the area will show up. Bees use pheromones for a number of different communication and behaviour-control purposes."

Attuned to the plight of bees plagued by a destructive mite and loss of habitat, Daily maintains an extra inventory of boxes, frames and beeswax foundations to accommodate the newcomers when she gets a call.
"I keep all of them," she says of her buzzing charges. "Once I get them to a new location, if I don't close them up in a hive and they're still in swarm mode, the little stinkers'll take off. When they stop running laps and settle into the center, I let them out so they can forage."

Daily's fascination with bees began in childhood and persisted even as she earned a degree in English, married and in 1986, became a Santa Barbara city police officer. She patrolled the streets for around 10 years, and despite retiring a decade ago, still draws parallels between the two occupations. "I dealt with wild things as a cop," she muses.

"In law enforcement, you have to be really calm, because people pick up on everything. I still have to stay calm, because bees sense it and you've got to be very Zen around these creatures. My suspects occasionally wanted to hurt me, but the bees really don't."

Debbie, her husband Brent, Tristan, 11, and Matt, 13, show off the great byproducts from Debbie?s Santa Ynez Valley Bee Charmer business. The Daily family lives in Santa Ynez.
Daily's initial foray into beekeeping came when she established a couple of hives at her Valley home to help pollinate the family's fruit trees. A few years later, in 2003, she suffered two debilitating strokes that left her wondering what lay ahead.

"One friend called for help with a hive," Daily remembers, "and told some of her friends, and then people were talking about this crazy woman who got bees out of trees. Someone passed me some money and I thought, hey, I could do this."

"I have tremendous spiritual connection with bees and my higher power," she adds thoughtfully. "Reading about bees sharpened me. They helped me with health issues, helped me reinvent myself and grow, and helped bring me back from the brink."

Beyond her personal link to bees, Daily celebrates their intricate organization and lively social life, as well as the fact that they're always teaching her something new.

"Everything about them blows my mind," she declares. "Bees are very elegant their biology, and that's what I love about them. They do these dances and they triangulate off the sun to tell each other where those flowers are. They're endlessly fascinating."

Debby Daily, the Santa Ynez Valley Bee Charmer, can be reached at 245-0568. Visit her on the web at www.syvbee.com and watch for her homegrown honey at El Rancho Marketplace.


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