"When I find myself in times of trouble,
Mother Mary comes to me,
Speaking words of Wisdom,
Let it be"
- The Beatles
Back in my 20's, I was fatally controlling of my life and all the happenings in it. I experienced a lot of heartbreak over things not happening "right now" no matter how hard I worked at them. It took me many hard knocks to overcome my need to try and force things into the timeline I expected. Ironically, it was also in this time of my life that I came across a particular piece of literature that touched me in a way very few pieces have and it was even more ironic that the topic of said piece was centered around the concepts of letting go and living with questions rather than forcing their answers. I was a college student and in my junior year of a Writing degree at the University of Evansville. I was taking a Creative Nonfiction class, the text for which was a collection of excerpts and essays. The first piece we studied was an excerpt by a woman named Sue Hubbell, a nature writer, from her book "A Country Year: Living the Questions." The excerpt chosen spoke to something in my heart and soul that I couldn't describe and I must have reread it several times throughout that semester for no reason other than to read it again. Something about the tone of that excerpt sounded so familiar to me...as if my own voice could be speaking, a voice deep inside that found peace and comfort in the idea of not controlling anything, but rather finding joy in watching the pattern of something beautiful and completely outside human control take place. I finally ordered the entire book and read it all in one day. I have read that book repeatedly and have fallen into a habit of reading it at least once a year now. I have gifted so many copies to friends and family, I have lost count on how many copies I have purchased.
"A Country Year: Living the Questions" by Sue Hubbell is a collection of stories written over the course of a year and its seasons in the Ozarks. Sue Hubbell was a writer and a beekeeper. She wrote this book of nature pieces centered around her farm, her beekeeping, and her relationship with the nature of that environment following her divorce. Its beautiful in its simplicity and told with such a frank, honest, and relatable voice, you can almost forget you're not the one experiencing the happenings documented in that book.The title page of the book features a quote by Rilke
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your
heart and try to live the questions themselves, like locked rooms and
like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now
seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be
able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the
questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
live along some distant day into the answer.” Reading this book and that quote did two things for me in particular. I discovered a new desire to keep bees at some point in my life and I learned that the truth this book expresses through everyday living amongst nature and its wild inhabitants is what my soul needed. At the age of 38, I can now say that the activity of beekeeping is now part of my life on my own little farm and that that activity and all those centered around Crow's Croft Farm have enabled me to live some of those questions and, by consequence, some of the answers.
There are many things in nature that cannot be controlled by human will or action. A swarm of honeybees is an excellent example of that. I grew up with a father and a grandfather who were both (and still are) terrified of bees. I have only ever been stung by a yellow jacket or a wasp and so I do find myself behaving much the same way as my relatives when those two insects come around. There is usually much flailing and dancing about before running away. I have gotten better about this with yellow jackets and wasps as I've gotten older, but my fear of honeybees and bumblebees waned in childhood. Since stinging ends their life, it seemed ridiculously silly in my young mind to assume a honeybee or a bumblebee would sting unprovoked. This mindset and the confirmation of it by my mother who held even the same attitude about wasps and yellow jackets made me unafraid of honeybees altogether. I count this a very good thing considering the story I am about to tell in regards to starting my first beehive here at Crow's Croft Farm.
Two years ago for Christmas, my husband gave me a gift that made me so happy, I cried with joy. It was a beehive kit complete with a deep brood box already painted, 9 frames, an inner cover, a hive top, a bee smoker, and hive tool. He had known from our first date my desire to someday keep bees and knew what this gift meant to me. Alas, finances and demands currently on the farm did not allow for me to start the hive the following spring, so I waited until this spring (2018) to make my arrangements. I ordered a package of bees rather than a nucleus hive and decided on, after much research, Italian honeybees for their disposition and honey production. Phil and I picked a spot out in the young orchard we'd planted to setup the hive and built up a base of cinderblocks to keep it up off the ground. Phil then drove some T-posts and fenced it with a remnant piece of no climb horse fence to give it some protection from the dogs and other animals that may disturb it. I waited impatiently for April 26th to roll around and distracted myself with reading up and researching all I could on beekeeping. I had been studying the topic for years, but it seemed to be the only thing that curbed my anticipation of installing my bees in the hive.
I had ordered my package of bees from Urban Bee Co. in Burien, WA. A 3lb package of bees comes with about 10,000 bees and a queen. The packages are installed with a can of sugar water stoppered with a piece of cloth. This provides food for the bees. Installed next to the can is a small queen cage with the queen bee inside. The queen cage is screened on all sides and has an opening on one end stoppered with a cork. The bees in the package all hang together in one giant cluster on the feeding can and around the queen cage. She is not queen yet and they are not a collective hive. They are listless and dispassionate, though they cling to each other for warmth and safety. The package itself is made of screen and quarter inch thick wood. I watched over and over again videos of hive installations and read up on how and where to attach the queen in her cage leading up to the day I could pick up my bees and bring them home.
Me being a multi-tasker, I scheduled on the same day an appointment with a man in Arlington, WA, who raises ducks. Winter and early spring 2018 at Crow's Croft Farm carried sadness with it. Three of the five ducks passed away. Doris was carried off by a predator and Roslyn and Mrs. Hudson fell ill and were peacefully seen across the Rainbow Bridge. Beatrice and Benedict were the only two left and Benedict needed more than just one hen. This gentleman had a large selection and a fair price. We still weren't setup for ducklings, so adult ducks were the only answer and so I had arranged to bring home four new duck hens from that farm in Arlington. On the way home, I would stop in at Burien and collect my package of bees since it was on the way. Lo and behold, the truck got a screw in its tire which left me with only Phil's BMW coup to carry out these errands.
Finally, the day came and I took a few hour road trip to gather both ducks and bees. The bee package was covered in stray bees clinging to the outside and I watched as the young woman dispensing the packages brushed them gently away with a bee brush. She wore no protective gear, no gloves, and the bees settled in her hair and on her shoulders. She carried my package of bees to the car and placed it on the floorboors of the passenger side. "Nice ducks," she commented hearing the quacks from the two kennels in the back seat. "So," she said, "it's very common that a few stray bees may still be on the outside and I didn't get them all, so there may be one or two floating about the car." She handed me two small marshmallows, "these are for when you install the queen. Replace the cork with marshmallows." Then she was gone...off to attend the next customer. I still called "thank you," and settled back into the car. The hum and buzz from the package on the passenger floorboards punctuated by the occasional quack of one of the four duck hens in the backseat made me smile as I turned back onto the interstate and started the hour long drive back home.
Sure enough, about five or six bees buzzed around the car and I just opened the sun roof and allowed them to escape. I didn't think much of it and just focused on the road, running through the lists in my head of things that needed to be done after the hive was installed. A few more bees buzzed about the car and I felt a nagging wonder as to where they had come from....I had let out the ones that were on the outside of the package already....then movement caught my eye...movement in the passenger seat. A small tornado of honeybees were swirling up from the floorboards and filling the space in the passenger seat. That was more than a few bees! I opened a window at first..thinking that was the best idea...but the airflow made them agitated and they spread throughout the entire car. I estimated at least several hundred of the bees were loose in the car and felt a momentarily panic hit me. My old need to control rose up and reared its ugly head and I felt myself getting very anxious at the lack of control of this current situation. The ducks fell quiet and traffic slowed on the highway. I shut the vents on the dash to prevent the bees from crawling into the air vents and closed the sunroof and windows except for a small crack to allow some airflow, but not alot. Still trying to focus on the road, I ran all possibilities through my mind on how I could gain control of this situation. Out of the chaos swirling around my brain, a comment from Sue Hubbell's book floated up out of my memory. "I often find that the bees know more what they need than I do." I took a deep breath and willed myself to calm down.
Looking at the situation logically, I knew I had only one choice. I still had about a hour to go thanks to the traffic and there was no feasible way to put the bees back in the package. More bees were crawling out through a seam in the package that had widened just enough for them to escape, but the majority were still in the package. Pulling over and getting out of the car would do no good, not unless I wanted to remove the package and leave it on the side of the highway and, even then, I had no bee suit or tools with me and no way to get the loose bees out of the car. So, the only thing to do was to continue driving and deal with the situation at hand. I took several deep breaths and willed myself to remain calm. Bees settled onto my hands, my arms, in my hair, on the steering wheel and started clustering on the dashboard. I became very conscious of where my hands were and my movements became very slow and steady. A bee's vision is based on movement and sudden movements may cause alarm. Had they been a cohesive hive with a queen they loved and protected, it may have been entirely different, but the bees were still listless and sedate. Traffic was stopped and I took the opportunity to watch one bee crawling along the car window. Her antennae searched the area in front of her and she continued to wander calmly and slowly. There was a steady hum in the car, but it was mild and almost soothing. Nonetheless, I hoped I wouldn't get pulled over for any reason. This would be very hard to explain and a distracted driving ticket was a given for sure.
When I finally arrived back home, I very carefully removed my seat belt checking all the while for any bees that may be on the belt or anywhere near my hands and slid out of the car. A small cloud of bees erupted behind me. They seemed pleased to be out of the car, but hung close to all their sisters. Taking a deep breath, I opened all the doors of the car and pulled out the kennels. Bees were still settled in my hair, but they took flight quickly. I took the ducks to the back yard and turned them loose in the duckyard and then went inside to fetch Phil.
Phil stared at me with eyebrows raised as I told him the whole story. He helped me zip up my bee suit, secured the veil, and a smile broke across his face at the telling of my tale. Shaking his head, he said, "Well, babe, you handled that well. Not sure I could have done that." We laughed and then I set to work getting the bees to their hive.
I worked clumsily with the bee gloves on my hands. I don't work well with gloves, but I wasn't quite brave enough to carry out this task with my bare hands exposed. The bees loose in the car had clustered on the dashboard or on the side of the package. Gently, I extracted the package from the car and set it down in the driveway. I brushed the cluster off the dash hoping a majority would join the rest clinging to the package and about half of them did.The rest settled back into a cluster on the dashboard of the BMW. I repeated the same action at least four times before deciding it was best to just install the hive. Bees were starting to leave the package and head back to the cluster in the car, so I closed the car door, leaving a window open, and picked up the buzzing bee package and walked slowly and carefully towards the hive setup in the orchard. Small clusters of bees settled on the arms of my bee jacket and on my leather gloved hands. I set it down gingerly on the ground next to the hive and took a moment to open the hive. I had set out a jug of sugar water earlier that morning and I quickly filled the bee feeder in the hive with it. The sugar water would entice the bees to stay and would give them something to eat and get established with once they were in the hive.
It was time to pull the queen cage out of the package and place it in the hive. I pried the metal can in the package up gently with my hive tool and lifted it out of the package. All the bees still inside erupted and set to buzzing, confused and flustered by the disturbance. I pulled the thin metal tab under the can upward and slit out the queen cage, taking a moment to marvel at the beautiful queen bee in her cage. I cursed the gloves on my hands as I clumsily popped out the cork that stoppered the end of her cage and held my gloved finger over it while I collected the small marshmallows they had given me and stuffed them into the opening. Phil had started videotaping me on his phone from several feet away so we could document the first hive being setup. I had thought a simple tack would work to secure her cage to one of the frames in the hive, but it wasn't' and I cursed at my clumsy fingers and at the tack I dropped. I then upset the box of tacks and felt my anger rising. Taking a deep breath, I told Phil I needed something else to secure the queen cage with and he set off to get his carpentry stapler for me. While I waited for him to return, I looked at the queen. Elegant and beautiful, she lounged in her cage, buzzing indignantly and her captivity. If she were exposed to the other bees at this moment, she would be killed instantly. The marshmallows were a temporary, easily consumed substance that the bees would eat through to try and get to her once they were all together in the hive, but by the time they would get to her, they would have accepted her as their own and would start grooming and tending her.
Phil returned with the stapler and I met him over by the garden to collect it since he wasn't in a bee suit. The bees were all swirling about the package, most of them still clinging in a giant cluster on the sugar water can. The queen, I imagine, hurled insults at me as I pinned her queen cage between two frames and stapled it to the top of one frame. Now came the part that seemed instinctively foolish on so many levels.I removed all the frames from the hive except the feeder and the frame with the queen attached and then picked up the package. I could hear Phil narrating the video he was shooting again and I warned him to stand a bit farther away for this step. I took a deep breath and then shook the package sharply downward causing all the clustered bees to fall suddenly in a big, buzzing heap on the bottom and then quickly turned it over, pouring them like beans into the hive. A cloud of bees erupted around me, but most of them just fell and collected on the bottom of the hive. I shook the package again and poured, then again, and again. The sun was shining and all I could hear was the rising hum of the bees upset by the unceremonious gesture of pouring them into the hive. They swarmed around me and the hive, their little gold bodies glinting in the sunlight. I was nervous, but excited at the same time. I carefully set the frames back in the hive, being careful to not crush any bees. They moved out of the way quickly and, before I set the inner cover and lid on the hive, I saw them clustering around the queen cage and starting to work on the marshmallow cap. Some bees still remained in the package and I set it on the lid of the hive on its side with its opening facing towards the entrance.
The cloud of bees not yet in the hive still swirled around me, but in a matter of minutes a cluster started to form on the front of the hive and I smiled as I watched the bees landing on the hive line up and start marching towards the doorway. I had put on the entrance reducer to encourage them to stay. They marched in dutifully as I gathered up the tacks I had spilled and the tools I had brought with me and secured the wire fence that surrounded the hive back in place. I then started walking slowly away. Bees were still clustering on parts of my suit and veil and Phil wandered a ways behind me directing me on where to swipe with the bee brush. A cluster had settled on my hat and I awkwardly brushed at them until they were gone. Phil dodged bees flying off my suit back towards the hive.
"Nice work, babe," he said as we met back by the BMW in the driveway. A good sized cluster covered the dash still, "Now what do we do about that?"
"Well, I said, I will have to make them leave." Since we only had the one suit, I told Phil to go ahead and go back inside. I set the can of sugar water and a bowl for it to drip into by the car in the driveway and opened all the doors again. For three hours, I swiped the cluster of bees off the dashboard every time they settled. In small groups, they gathered on the sugar water or they flew off in search of their lost hive. Several times, I walked the bowl with the sugar water out to the hive and knocked the bees off at the entrance of the hive. As evening came, the number of bees in the car diminished to just a handful and the rest either wandered off or were settled in the hive with their sisters. I was exhausted after hours of trying to remove the bees from the car, but had managed to check my controlling tendencies during the process. After all, bees were wild creatures and they didn't bend to anyone's will but their own. I left a window cracked for those still remaining in the car. in the morning, all the bees were gone save a few that had perished and were lying on the floorboards.
Four days later, I opened the hive to remove the queen cage and do a hive inspection. The cage was empty and the bees were already at work starting to faintly draw out comb on the frame foundations. I did not locate the queen, but saw a good laying pattern of brood in some already completed comb and was satisfied that my hive was on its way and settled. She seemed to be laying eggs after a successful maiden flight and I spotted a drone or two hanging out about the hive still.
I told friends and family about the hive and how excited I was. When I shared the story about transporting the package of bees, the unanimous response was that I was either very insane or incredibly brave. I believe I am just incredibly fortunate. Daily at least, sometimes several times a day, I would walk out to the hive and watch the bees flying in and out, covered in pollen from the spring flowers.
I did my hive inspections, though demands around the farm limited me on doing them as regular as is recommended. I did my best and resolved to let this be a learning experience. Nearly all beekeepers I talked to said they had lost their first hives when starting out and so I tried to adjust my expectations and not let my controlling tendencies take over. I had read that you should give them more room once they had filled four or five frames in their brood box. During an overdue hive inspection, I saw that they had filled six frames front and back with comb. I located the queen, her attendants dutifully grooming her, and carefully set the frame she was on back in the hive. Pulling another up, I muttered curses and chastised myself for not keeping up with a regular hive inspection schedule. A queen cell hung off the bottom of the frame. Different than the brood cells tightly and neatly kept in their perfect geometric comb on the frame, these cells extend and elongate looking like peanuts. A hive builds these for one of two reasons...to prepare for a new queen to be born or to practice for that occasion. From what I could see, all signs pointed to a healthy queen, so raising another could only mean one thing. They didn't think they had enough room to continue the hive grow. In short, this was a clear sign of potential swarming. I quickly gathered what was needed to put a second brood box on the hive, hoping this would change their inclinations to swarm and leave the hive in search of better accommodations.
One day, Phil and I set to work taking down the outdoor lights still hung up in the cedar trees around our firepit from our wedding. Phil was up in the trees, perched precariously on the ladder untying or cutting down the ropes that held the lights in place and handing them down to me when he suddenly stopped and, eyes fixed in the direction of the bee hive, said, "uh...Chris...something's going on with the hive." Following his gaze, my heart sank. a spinning tower of bees stretched from the hive entrance to about 20 feet above the hive. Afternoon sun glinting off their gold bodies, it would have been a beautiful site had it not meant they were possibly swarming having raised another queen. Bees marched up the front of the hive in a steady line, taking off to join the tower of their sisters.
"What do we do?" Phil asked.
"Nothing," I responded, "If they swarm, they swarm. There's nothing I can do to stop them at this point. Maybe if they pick an area to rest and swarm before they find another, I can catch them again, but that's about it."
Ten minutes later it was over and all was quiet. I hadn't seen them swarm off in a big buzzing ball as all the videos and research I had done indicated. I was hopeful. The next day, I opened the hive and was surprised to see that not only had they not even remotely started working on the second brood box I had given them, but that there seemed to be far less bees in the hive. I found the queen and she was still going about her duties with her attendants surrounding her. There was healthy brood in the comb and still some capped honey, but not as much as I had seen in the last inspection. The queen cell I had seen was empty. I concluded that the hive may have split on its own. I reinstalled the feeder and fed the hive. If they hadn't started drawing comb in the second brood box in the next two weeks, I would remove it and replace it with the super which was much smaller. Supers are usually placed for honey harvest while brood boxes are usually left in place as a source of food for the hive. With the summer waning and the nectar flow slowing, my concern was they would be left with a much bigger hive than they could feasibly keep warm during the winter months and not enough honey to feed themselves. Opening the hive in the cold months is cruel and almost certainly detrimental to the hive. As it turned out, I ended up replacing the second brood box with a super and I continue to feed them now that summer is on its way out and fall is coming.
Losing half of my first hive has left me slightly discouraged, but not too much. I still go out on my breaks from work with the dogs to watch the hive busily working and I am more diligent with my hive inspections, especially now that the cooler weather is coming and soon I will be unable to inspect. I have taken no honey from the bees this year, but am hoping they will be at a point where I can put a second super on next spring and harvest some honey by next summer. I love seeing my bees as I wander the property or work in my garden and Phil and I have shared many a smile over what we call "our bees". The native woodland bees do an excellent job of pollinating our flowers, berries, fruit trees, and vegetables, but we can easily tell the difference between their fuzzy bodies and the sleek, gold bodies of our Italian honeybees and we often point them out to each other with, "Look, its one of ours!" I have recently acquired a large, motorized honey extractor, several hive bodies and parts, and Phil and I have made plans for a small fenced off area between the horse paddocks we're building for a beeyard. I think it is safe to say, this hobby will be with me for a long time.
My obsession with controlling the situations presented me is still a part of my personality and I struggle with it often. In some aspects of my life, it has been a very strong asset. When it comes to the happenings around this beautiful farm my husband and I continue to build, however, allowing it to run amuck results in missing the entire point of this life I have always wanted and now have. Like the bees, this farm is full of elements not meant to be controlled by human intervention. I can assist and I can provide some necessities or elements that may contribute, but I have no control over the outcomes. The bees will do what they do as will the birds, the deer, the coyotes, eagles, and my own menagerie of domesticated animals to some degree. My role is not to control the situation or to know all the answers, it is to observe, enjoy, and be awed by the beauty and wonder that is this 8.6 acres that I get to call my own and bear witness to all the amazing things that happen here. I am grateful to live these questions everyday and I enjoy the daily quest towards the answers.
I had ordered my package of bees from Urban Bee Co. in Burien, WA. A 3lb package of bees comes with about 10,000 bees and a queen. The packages are installed with a can of sugar water stoppered with a piece of cloth. This provides food for the bees. Installed next to the can is a small queen cage with the queen bee inside. The queen cage is screened on all sides and has an opening on one end stoppered with a cork. The bees in the package all hang together in one giant cluster on the feeding can and around the queen cage. She is not queen yet and they are not a collective hive. They are listless and dispassionate, though they cling to each other for warmth and safety. The package itself is made of screen and quarter inch thick wood. I watched over and over again videos of hive installations and read up on how and where to attach the queen in her cage leading up to the day I could pick up my bees and bring them home.
Me being a multi-tasker, I scheduled on the same day an appointment with a man in Arlington, WA, who raises ducks. Winter and early spring 2018 at Crow's Croft Farm carried sadness with it. Three of the five ducks passed away. Doris was carried off by a predator and Roslyn and Mrs. Hudson fell ill and were peacefully seen across the Rainbow Bridge. Beatrice and Benedict were the only two left and Benedict needed more than just one hen. This gentleman had a large selection and a fair price. We still weren't setup for ducklings, so adult ducks were the only answer and so I had arranged to bring home four new duck hens from that farm in Arlington. On the way home, I would stop in at Burien and collect my package of bees since it was on the way. Lo and behold, the truck got a screw in its tire which left me with only Phil's BMW coup to carry out these errands.
Finally, the day came and I took a few hour road trip to gather both ducks and bees. The bee package was covered in stray bees clinging to the outside and I watched as the young woman dispensing the packages brushed them gently away with a bee brush. She wore no protective gear, no gloves, and the bees settled in her hair and on her shoulders. She carried my package of bees to the car and placed it on the floorboors of the passenger side. "Nice ducks," she commented hearing the quacks from the two kennels in the back seat. "So," she said, "it's very common that a few stray bees may still be on the outside and I didn't get them all, so there may be one or two floating about the car." She handed me two small marshmallows, "these are for when you install the queen. Replace the cork with marshmallows." Then she was gone...off to attend the next customer. I still called "thank you," and settled back into the car. The hum and buzz from the package on the passenger floorboards punctuated by the occasional quack of one of the four duck hens in the backseat made me smile as I turned back onto the interstate and started the hour long drive back home.
Sure enough, about five or six bees buzzed around the car and I just opened the sun roof and allowed them to escape. I didn't think much of it and just focused on the road, running through the lists in my head of things that needed to be done after the hive was installed. A few more bees buzzed about the car and I felt a nagging wonder as to where they had come from....I had let out the ones that were on the outside of the package already....then movement caught my eye...movement in the passenger seat. A small tornado of honeybees were swirling up from the floorboards and filling the space in the passenger seat. That was more than a few bees! I opened a window at first..thinking that was the best idea...but the airflow made them agitated and they spread throughout the entire car. I estimated at least several hundred of the bees were loose in the car and felt a momentarily panic hit me. My old need to control rose up and reared its ugly head and I felt myself getting very anxious at the lack of control of this current situation. The ducks fell quiet and traffic slowed on the highway. I shut the vents on the dash to prevent the bees from crawling into the air vents and closed the sunroof and windows except for a small crack to allow some airflow, but not alot. Still trying to focus on the road, I ran all possibilities through my mind on how I could gain control of this situation. Out of the chaos swirling around my brain, a comment from Sue Hubbell's book floated up out of my memory. "I often find that the bees know more what they need than I do." I took a deep breath and willed myself to calm down.
Looking at the situation logically, I knew I had only one choice. I still had about a hour to go thanks to the traffic and there was no feasible way to put the bees back in the package. More bees were crawling out through a seam in the package that had widened just enough for them to escape, but the majority were still in the package. Pulling over and getting out of the car would do no good, not unless I wanted to remove the package and leave it on the side of the highway and, even then, I had no bee suit or tools with me and no way to get the loose bees out of the car. So, the only thing to do was to continue driving and deal with the situation at hand. I took several deep breaths and willed myself to remain calm. Bees settled onto my hands, my arms, in my hair, on the steering wheel and started clustering on the dashboard. I became very conscious of where my hands were and my movements became very slow and steady. A bee's vision is based on movement and sudden movements may cause alarm. Had they been a cohesive hive with a queen they loved and protected, it may have been entirely different, but the bees were still listless and sedate. Traffic was stopped and I took the opportunity to watch one bee crawling along the car window. Her antennae searched the area in front of her and she continued to wander calmly and slowly. There was a steady hum in the car, but it was mild and almost soothing. Nonetheless, I hoped I wouldn't get pulled over for any reason. This would be very hard to explain and a distracted driving ticket was a given for sure.
When I finally arrived back home, I very carefully removed my seat belt checking all the while for any bees that may be on the belt or anywhere near my hands and slid out of the car. A small cloud of bees erupted behind me. They seemed pleased to be out of the car, but hung close to all their sisters. Taking a deep breath, I opened all the doors of the car and pulled out the kennels. Bees were still settled in my hair, but they took flight quickly. I took the ducks to the back yard and turned them loose in the duckyard and then went inside to fetch Phil.
Phil stared at me with eyebrows raised as I told him the whole story. He helped me zip up my bee suit, secured the veil, and a smile broke across his face at the telling of my tale. Shaking his head, he said, "Well, babe, you handled that well. Not sure I could have done that." We laughed and then I set to work getting the bees to their hive.
I worked clumsily with the bee gloves on my hands. I don't work well with gloves, but I wasn't quite brave enough to carry out this task with my bare hands exposed. The bees loose in the car had clustered on the dashboard or on the side of the package. Gently, I extracted the package from the car and set it down in the driveway. I brushed the cluster off the dash hoping a majority would join the rest clinging to the package and about half of them did.The rest settled back into a cluster on the dashboard of the BMW. I repeated the same action at least four times before deciding it was best to just install the hive. Bees were starting to leave the package and head back to the cluster in the car, so I closed the car door, leaving a window open, and picked up the buzzing bee package and walked slowly and carefully towards the hive setup in the orchard. Small clusters of bees settled on the arms of my bee jacket and on my leather gloved hands. I set it down gingerly on the ground next to the hive and took a moment to open the hive. I had set out a jug of sugar water earlier that morning and I quickly filled the bee feeder in the hive with it. The sugar water would entice the bees to stay and would give them something to eat and get established with once they were in the hive.
It was time to pull the queen cage out of the package and place it in the hive. I pried the metal can in the package up gently with my hive tool and lifted it out of the package. All the bees still inside erupted and set to buzzing, confused and flustered by the disturbance. I pulled the thin metal tab under the can upward and slit out the queen cage, taking a moment to marvel at the beautiful queen bee in her cage. I cursed the gloves on my hands as I clumsily popped out the cork that stoppered the end of her cage and held my gloved finger over it while I collected the small marshmallows they had given me and stuffed them into the opening. Phil had started videotaping me on his phone from several feet away so we could document the first hive being setup. I had thought a simple tack would work to secure her cage to one of the frames in the hive, but it wasn't' and I cursed at my clumsy fingers and at the tack I dropped. I then upset the box of tacks and felt my anger rising. Taking a deep breath, I told Phil I needed something else to secure the queen cage with and he set off to get his carpentry stapler for me. While I waited for him to return, I looked at the queen. Elegant and beautiful, she lounged in her cage, buzzing indignantly and her captivity. If she were exposed to the other bees at this moment, she would be killed instantly. The marshmallows were a temporary, easily consumed substance that the bees would eat through to try and get to her once they were all together in the hive, but by the time they would get to her, they would have accepted her as their own and would start grooming and tending her.
Phil returned with the stapler and I met him over by the garden to collect it since he wasn't in a bee suit. The bees were all swirling about the package, most of them still clinging in a giant cluster on the sugar water can. The queen, I imagine, hurled insults at me as I pinned her queen cage between two frames and stapled it to the top of one frame. Now came the part that seemed instinctively foolish on so many levels.I removed all the frames from the hive except the feeder and the frame with the queen attached and then picked up the package. I could hear Phil narrating the video he was shooting again and I warned him to stand a bit farther away for this step. I took a deep breath and then shook the package sharply downward causing all the clustered bees to fall suddenly in a big, buzzing heap on the bottom and then quickly turned it over, pouring them like beans into the hive. A cloud of bees erupted around me, but most of them just fell and collected on the bottom of the hive. I shook the package again and poured, then again, and again. The sun was shining and all I could hear was the rising hum of the bees upset by the unceremonious gesture of pouring them into the hive. They swarmed around me and the hive, their little gold bodies glinting in the sunlight. I was nervous, but excited at the same time. I carefully set the frames back in the hive, being careful to not crush any bees. They moved out of the way quickly and, before I set the inner cover and lid on the hive, I saw them clustering around the queen cage and starting to work on the marshmallow cap. Some bees still remained in the package and I set it on the lid of the hive on its side with its opening facing towards the entrance.
The cloud of bees not yet in the hive still swirled around me, but in a matter of minutes a cluster started to form on the front of the hive and I smiled as I watched the bees landing on the hive line up and start marching towards the doorway. I had put on the entrance reducer to encourage them to stay. They marched in dutifully as I gathered up the tacks I had spilled and the tools I had brought with me and secured the wire fence that surrounded the hive back in place. I then started walking slowly away. Bees were still clustering on parts of my suit and veil and Phil wandered a ways behind me directing me on where to swipe with the bee brush. A cluster had settled on my hat and I awkwardly brushed at them until they were gone. Phil dodged bees flying off my suit back towards the hive.
"Nice work, babe," he said as we met back by the BMW in the driveway. A good sized cluster covered the dash still, "Now what do we do about that?"
"Well, I said, I will have to make them leave." Since we only had the one suit, I told Phil to go ahead and go back inside. I set the can of sugar water and a bowl for it to drip into by the car in the driveway and opened all the doors again. For three hours, I swiped the cluster of bees off the dashboard every time they settled. In small groups, they gathered on the sugar water or they flew off in search of their lost hive. Several times, I walked the bowl with the sugar water out to the hive and knocked the bees off at the entrance of the hive. As evening came, the number of bees in the car diminished to just a handful and the rest either wandered off or were settled in the hive with their sisters. I was exhausted after hours of trying to remove the bees from the car, but had managed to check my controlling tendencies during the process. After all, bees were wild creatures and they didn't bend to anyone's will but their own. I left a window cracked for those still remaining in the car. in the morning, all the bees were gone save a few that had perished and were lying on the floorboards.
Four days later, I opened the hive to remove the queen cage and do a hive inspection. The cage was empty and the bees were already at work starting to faintly draw out comb on the frame foundations. I did not locate the queen, but saw a good laying pattern of brood in some already completed comb and was satisfied that my hive was on its way and settled. She seemed to be laying eggs after a successful maiden flight and I spotted a drone or two hanging out about the hive still.
I told friends and family about the hive and how excited I was. When I shared the story about transporting the package of bees, the unanimous response was that I was either very insane or incredibly brave. I believe I am just incredibly fortunate. Daily at least, sometimes several times a day, I would walk out to the hive and watch the bees flying in and out, covered in pollen from the spring flowers.
I did my hive inspections, though demands around the farm limited me on doing them as regular as is recommended. I did my best and resolved to let this be a learning experience. Nearly all beekeepers I talked to said they had lost their first hives when starting out and so I tried to adjust my expectations and not let my controlling tendencies take over. I had read that you should give them more room once they had filled four or five frames in their brood box. During an overdue hive inspection, I saw that they had filled six frames front and back with comb. I located the queen, her attendants dutifully grooming her, and carefully set the frame she was on back in the hive. Pulling another up, I muttered curses and chastised myself for not keeping up with a regular hive inspection schedule. A queen cell hung off the bottom of the frame. Different than the brood cells tightly and neatly kept in their perfect geometric comb on the frame, these cells extend and elongate looking like peanuts. A hive builds these for one of two reasons...to prepare for a new queen to be born or to practice for that occasion. From what I could see, all signs pointed to a healthy queen, so raising another could only mean one thing. They didn't think they had enough room to continue the hive grow. In short, this was a clear sign of potential swarming. I quickly gathered what was needed to put a second brood box on the hive, hoping this would change their inclinations to swarm and leave the hive in search of better accommodations.
One day, Phil and I set to work taking down the outdoor lights still hung up in the cedar trees around our firepit from our wedding. Phil was up in the trees, perched precariously on the ladder untying or cutting down the ropes that held the lights in place and handing them down to me when he suddenly stopped and, eyes fixed in the direction of the bee hive, said, "uh...Chris...something's going on with the hive." Following his gaze, my heart sank. a spinning tower of bees stretched from the hive entrance to about 20 feet above the hive. Afternoon sun glinting off their gold bodies, it would have been a beautiful site had it not meant they were possibly swarming having raised another queen. Bees marched up the front of the hive in a steady line, taking off to join the tower of their sisters.
"What do we do?" Phil asked.
"Nothing," I responded, "If they swarm, they swarm. There's nothing I can do to stop them at this point. Maybe if they pick an area to rest and swarm before they find another, I can catch them again, but that's about it."
Ten minutes later it was over and all was quiet. I hadn't seen them swarm off in a big buzzing ball as all the videos and research I had done indicated. I was hopeful. The next day, I opened the hive and was surprised to see that not only had they not even remotely started working on the second brood box I had given them, but that there seemed to be far less bees in the hive. I found the queen and she was still going about her duties with her attendants surrounding her. There was healthy brood in the comb and still some capped honey, but not as much as I had seen in the last inspection. The queen cell I had seen was empty. I concluded that the hive may have split on its own. I reinstalled the feeder and fed the hive. If they hadn't started drawing comb in the second brood box in the next two weeks, I would remove it and replace it with the super which was much smaller. Supers are usually placed for honey harvest while brood boxes are usually left in place as a source of food for the hive. With the summer waning and the nectar flow slowing, my concern was they would be left with a much bigger hive than they could feasibly keep warm during the winter months and not enough honey to feed themselves. Opening the hive in the cold months is cruel and almost certainly detrimental to the hive. As it turned out, I ended up replacing the second brood box with a super and I continue to feed them now that summer is on its way out and fall is coming.
Losing half of my first hive has left me slightly discouraged, but not too much. I still go out on my breaks from work with the dogs to watch the hive busily working and I am more diligent with my hive inspections, especially now that the cooler weather is coming and soon I will be unable to inspect. I have taken no honey from the bees this year, but am hoping they will be at a point where I can put a second super on next spring and harvest some honey by next summer. I love seeing my bees as I wander the property or work in my garden and Phil and I have shared many a smile over what we call "our bees". The native woodland bees do an excellent job of pollinating our flowers, berries, fruit trees, and vegetables, but we can easily tell the difference between their fuzzy bodies and the sleek, gold bodies of our Italian honeybees and we often point them out to each other with, "Look, its one of ours!" I have recently acquired a large, motorized honey extractor, several hive bodies and parts, and Phil and I have made plans for a small fenced off area between the horse paddocks we're building for a beeyard. I think it is safe to say, this hobby will be with me for a long time.
My obsession with controlling the situations presented me is still a part of my personality and I struggle with it often. In some aspects of my life, it has been a very strong asset. When it comes to the happenings around this beautiful farm my husband and I continue to build, however, allowing it to run amuck results in missing the entire point of this life I have always wanted and now have. Like the bees, this farm is full of elements not meant to be controlled by human intervention. I can assist and I can provide some necessities or elements that may contribute, but I have no control over the outcomes. The bees will do what they do as will the birds, the deer, the coyotes, eagles, and my own menagerie of domesticated animals to some degree. My role is not to control the situation or to know all the answers, it is to observe, enjoy, and be awed by the beauty and wonder that is this 8.6 acres that I get to call my own and bear witness to all the amazing things that happen here. I am grateful to live these questions everyday and I enjoy the daily quest towards the answers.
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