My UnBEElievable Day

Hey, it's my blog, and I can have a cheesy title if I want.

This morning I got up thinking it was going to be just your average, normal, beautiful sunshiney day after a DREARY day yesterday, and the day before when I'd just gotten back from vacation and didn't feel like doing much. Finally, a day to weed the garden and redo a flower bed that turned out to be a water dam instead. Morning goes uneventful, but after my lunch break I stepped out on the front porch and hear...lots of buzzing. Lots. Not the normal amount of buzzing I usually hear from our two new beehives 200 yards away. This was LOUD.

I investigate, and can tell REALLY quick that something is out of whack. The normally calm hives are all a-flutter...er, a-buzz with a huge cloud of bees. This is a pretty frantic sight for a uber-novice beekeeper, having been told in every beekeeping book that I've read, and at every beekeeping meeting that THIS IS BAD. Swarming, to those of you non bee-in-the-know, is a hive's natural way of making more hives...the bees make a new queen, and a good number of them fly into the wild blue yonder. That's bad because they're not staying to make you yummy honey.

So I did the only thing I knew to do. First, I made about four pointless trips back and forth from the hives to the house. During this time, the bees have now worked themselves into a big ball in the very tip-top of a skinny oak tree. Since I couldn't figure out what to do, I called hubby and yelled, "HONEY...THE BEES ARE SWARMING!!!"

Our following conversation went something like this:

"HONEY, THE BEES ARE SWARMING!!!"

"THE BEES ARE SWARMING?!?"

"THE BEES ARE SWARMING!!!"

"WOW, that's COOL!!!"

"YEAH, that's COOL! But what do I DO?"

"You gotta get the swarm!"

"Get the swarm? But it's in a tree."

"How far?"

"Uhhhh....a loooong way...like...40' or more."

"Well...get it if you can...we can make a new hive"

If I can. "IF you can" aren't words I take lightly. Of course I CAN...somehow. Those are OUR bees, and just where do they think they're going? Of course I can get those bees...it's not that high...I mean, they're right THERE.

Fact #1 about bees...they don't respond to calls of "Here bee bee bee bee bee!" So, first thing I needed was a ladder. So I got our ladder...which is like 5' tall. Not gonna cut it. Not even if I unwisely place it in the back of the truck, which I OF COURSE wouldn't do - it was only a very brief consideration. So...surely the neighbors have an extendable ladder, which they do, and I borrow. Armed with a very long ladder, my next step was to work for 10 minutes standing the ladder up to the tree, consistently banging the tree as hard as possible, shaking the swarm and ticking them off. After they're good and mad, I decided to climb the ladder.

I'm going to back up a minute back to childhood, when there wasn't a tree or a roof I couldn't climb. Climbing was my game, and I was good at it. The bros and I spent long hours on insanely tall perches in the sycamore tree in the front yard (unbeknownst to mom) without a single worry of falling. Then...at some point in time that changed. I'm not sure when...but I did notice a ridiculous amount of shaking and sweating while climbing a ladder in high school during a paint-the-house extravaganza. I dunno...maybe when I got taller my center of gravity changed. Maybe I grew a chicken liver. For whatever reason, I all of a sudden realized I had a problem with heights. Maybe not heights so much as feeling insecure and FALLING from heights. I can go to any height if it feels safe...tall ladders most definately do NOT.

Back to present - now I've made it up the ladder. After a couple tries, I had to ditch the beekeeping veil and gloves and go up the ladder "naked"...but I'm relying heavily on the factoid in my "Beekeeping for Dummies" (and at this point I'm thinking that title is apt) that swarming bees are full of honey and aren't prone to stinging. That "prone" is an interesting word. It seems to mean "it won't usually happen, but it'll probably happen to you."

Now I have to wonder how I find myself 40' up in a too-skinny oak tree, which is bending precariously, standing on the rung of a entendable ladder which reads "Do Not Stand On This Rung", hacking away with a saw at a branch holding a basketball-sized wad of stinging bees. All the time shaking, sweating, and talking to myself like the crazy person I must be.

After a few precarious tries, I finally cut the branch with the biggest wad of bees, successfully ditch the saw without hitting a dog or cat, which are both unwisely sitting at the bottom of the tree watching the procedure, and make my way down the ladder with branch containing the bee wad. According to "Beekeeping for Dummies", I can put them in a cardboard box. Which I do (see pic)...after unbelievably getting the swarm down without banging it or dropping it. Then back to the book, which is unclear at this point. Or else I'm a real dummy. So I called a lady from the beekeeping club, who tells me to shake them into a hive body, since that's all I've got. They ARE pretty docile, I must say...to endure a cutting, a trip down the ladder, being put in a box, then a shaking into a hive. But now I've been told I need to get a frame of brood and honey from one of the other hives.

No problem...NOW I'm a pro. Thing is, THESE bees aren't swarming, and they don't take too lightly having brood and honey stolen. They're pissed. And once I'm in the hive taking out the frame, they begin to very rudely exploit a hole in my armor - a gap between the elastic gloves and my sleeve. Fact #2 about bees, they also do not respond to yells of "STOP STINGING ME!!!"

Now I'm in the middle of robbing the hive, and I have at least FIVE angry bees up my sleeve...just stingin' away. My arm is on fire, and all I can do is kind of a little dance and say bad words. My overwhelming urge is to go running back to the house screaming bloody murder, but I can't make them MADDER - so I grit my teeth and calmly put the hive back together, added the robbed brood and honey to the new hive, put the hive back together, and THEN ran back to the house at a dead sprint, shedding gloves and shirt on the way. Most of them had already stung and were dead or dying, but I did have a couple live ones fly out. Thankfully we live at the end of a dirt road, and to my knowledge nobody saw me streaking the yard in my bra.

So now we have three hives. Soon to have four, because we can't just get into a new hobby slowly like normal people. We're also in the process of getting a wild hive out of a tree in town, which is not nearly the harrowing experience of getting a swarm. Getting a wild hive is really no more than being mean, blocking the entrances to the hive, and making them gradually go into your hive box.

And despite all this, we're still not guaranteed a butt-load of honey...but keep your fingers crossed! I would, but mine are swollen...