Tending to the Hive

For a history of our family’s honeybee hive, refer to You Never Can Tell With Bees

Stephie called us out watch her add another box to the hive for the growing colony.

She also requested Benedryl for the boy. 

Next to the friendly hive, grown from the swarm we rescued from the apple orchard behind the barn last May, a renegade throng of feral bees has recently discovered an abandoned hive(they’re a rough bunch smoking and drinking, carousing with the queen bee and all).

They fidget around the hive, loitering as it were, without the order and pattern of the tended colony. Seemingly looking for trouble and Kai found it on the lip.

Now Kai’s no sissy when it comes to bees. Since he was a tot, he was tenderly picking bumblebees out of the clover, petting them, before sending them on their way. Occasionally you’ll hear the little guy say “oh, he stung me”, but without delay Kai is back to his apian aspirations. 

The lip incident was no different.

As our family beekeeper,  Stephie cracks the whip on any drone who thinks they’ll be nipping honey off the sweat of another bee’s back. She is prepared with a beautifully painted nuc box, should another swarm head for the orchard.

You Can Never Tell with Bees....

...but the wrong sort of bees these were not. They swarmed in Gran’s orchard between the barns, a matter of feet really from the nesting box. So out comes sister Steph with the sugar water for the hive and I put up the ladder (for Steph of course, I was the Photographer). We found more of Gramp’s beekeeping gear in the barn and Sis donned it beautifully. And we said things like, "Tut-tut looks like rain", and "The important bee to deceive is the Queen Bee" and "I think the bees suspect something" and "You don't look like a little black rain cloud".

Up the ladder with dull pruners (the sharp ones were at my house, oops) she went and the cardboard box for transporting the swarm to the hive with her. Well, let me tell you that dull pruners are never a good choice and box-propped-on-lower-branches-to catch-swarm, even less, compounded by wobbly, old, wooden, orchard ladder…..snap!, ugh!, fwap, thump, BUZZZZZZZZZZZ…….Photographer ducks, beekeeper flies from branches to the ground!
Then we remember: swarming bees don’t sting or anyway, unlikely. It just so happens, that standing in the midst of bees amuck, feels a tad disconcerting. But we managed to rally.
When we discover: Success! The swarm, though perhaps a bit discombobulated, is in the box (or mostly so).

Around the side of the barn comes Pop from the garden. He encourages the victory and lends a hand to the finishing touches. The swarm is emptied into the hive and the loose bees gather themselves before settling down.

Some tried to escape but we know their secrets, their little ways and now we will make them our slaves to produce honey (sinister laugh)-our indentured servants to fly from blossom to bloom collecting pollen for our good- shhh, they don’t even know it!