Hardcore Swarm Duty

Another swarm. Not so big this time, but much harder to contain. They ended up in the neighbor's directly back of us and luckily he was home and a gentle guy who had no problem with us gathering the bees. Trouble is they'd established themselves on a long two by four in a disused garden and were already building comb like it was a top-loading hive. So we scooped bees into the banker's box again. I'm beginning to imagine a better swarm catcher now. I see a box with something very enticing inside--a wax frame covered with sugar water with a hole or two on top of the box that the bees with crawl into. They like small, dark openings into a dark, enclosed space.

We got as many bees as we could into a box and attempted to re-unite them with the hive they swarmed from. Big mistake. They just went back to the same place again. In the meantime, J and I had to go pick up our kids from school. I gave our local bee expert a call. He's been keeping bees for over fifty years. He is calm and assuring. "It's all an experiment," he says and talks me through what I need to do. I need to sprinkle some frames with sugar water, put them in a new box and start a new hive. We barely have enough equipment, but it will have to do. This is one of the first things they should tell you about beekeeping. You really need a surplus of equipment because of swarm management and that is going to be a big issue with urban beekeeping.

So I went back, introduced myself to the neighbor, gave him my phone number and scooped more bees. Got a few more to come back to a new wooden hive box. However, there was a ball of bees on the ground near the tall hive. WTF? The thing is, the day before we did a hive check and I dropped the top of the hive on the ground. Yeah well, I must have dropped the queen, which is every beekeeper's nightmare. I tried to entice the bees into flower pots with holes on the bottom with sugar water-coated frames inside. This worked to some extent, but it was very slow and it was getting cold and dark. There was such an intransigent clump of bees in one spot I thought there must be a queen there. So I took a shovel and picked up clumps of earth and grass to put near the hive opening. Sure enough, I finally spotted the queen. She is long, dignified, and caramel-colored, carried along on a carpet of bees licking her and fanning her and trying to keep her warm. I watched and waiting and wondered if she was dead. They carried her as if she was a mummified Egyptian queen. I waited. It started to rain, so I went down on all fours to keep off the rain. I asked P. for a pair of tweezers and I gently moved her to the hive entrance. She was alive and moving and finally went in. I shook the other bees out of the grass that still attracted them because it contained her scent. The bees at the entrance made a very loud buzzing noise and fanned all the stragglers into the hive with the Nasanov reflex. This is about the loudest sound I've heard them make as singular bees. I look in the neighbor's yard and there is still a small clump on his two by four. We'll have to deal with them again tomorrow. I wonder how they will make out now that it has begun to rain. I have a feeling they will survive. I've seen these bees foraging in the rain. They are tough little suckers.

I went inside and stirred some quinoa into the pasta sauce P made out of what was in the fridge. Then I had a glass of port and some hazelnut wafers. Finally my hands stopped shaking.