Flash Bee Mobs

Those of you who follow the news closely may be aware of a new phenomenon made possible by cell phones, text messaging, and Twitter called "Flash Mobs". These are groups of people who suddenly show up somewhere at the same time from different places to prove that they have no job or real life and maybe protest something while they are at it. Until these gatherings were given a name, it was assumed they were just a bunch of kids with nothing better to do with their time than all hang out at the park with tape over their mouths or other such nonsense that kids do. Now that they are "Flash Mobs" though, they are suddenly a "force to be reckoned with", whatever that means.

Buzzard "Flash Mob"

Shark "Flash Mob"

I would like to go on record as pointing out that kids with cell phones did not invent "flash mobs". In fact, they have occurred in nature as long as nature has existed. Just ask a buzzard or shark.

I was reminded of the ancient heritage of flash mobs yesterday, in fact. As most of you know, I am a new beekeeper and I am trying to make as many beekeeping mistakes as possible in my first year to get them over with. That isn't actually how I planned things, but that is the way they have gone so I am just rolling with it. So far I have made lots of experience-building mistakes to check off my list of dumb things new beekeepers do. It is getting to be quite an extensive list and am fairly proud that I have been able to accomplish so much in such a short amount of time. .

When I got my first batch of honey in the early summer, I was delighted that I got nearly twenty pints in my first year. This isn't a lot to get from two hives, but considering that I had invested a lot of time and expense in letting one of them swarm (check) in the spring and got a late start (check), I thought it was pretty good. But what excited me more was the fact that my stronger colony seemed to be on track to make a second batch before the fall was over. In fact, I checked on their work just last week and had decided that it would be time to harvest the second batch of honey this past weekend. The weather didn't cooperate though and sent a tropical storm our way. It is not recommended that you work with bees in tropical storms, so I waited until this weekend. I did not, as hindsight tells me I should have, install entrance reducers to make the hive easier for the bees to defend. (Check).

Yesterday I was driving past my bee hives and noticed a LOT of bees were buzzing around in front of the hives. At first I thought "SWARM!" but then realized it was really late in the year for that kind of nonsense. I was late doing something else (like getting to work) so I couldn't stop and try to decipher what was going on at the moment. I made a mental note to return as soon as possible and see what their problem was.

Later in the day I went back to the hives to see what the commotion was about. Everything looked normal. Bees coming and going, some hanging out on the front talking about the weather and spreading general gossip (you know, the majority of the population of a hive is female). I had decided that they were all just excited about the nice weather and needed to get out and stretch their wings after being cooped up in the house for four days while it rained and the wind blew. I was glad that they were feeling spry with the cooler weather. I decided to take a look at my honey production and make sure they were really ready. Then I realized something was wrong.

A week ago when I opened my hive, there were nine medium frames of comb honey almost completely capped and ready for me to transfer it to glass jars. Today, there were the same nine medium frames of comb, but with one vital element missing. The honey. Every frame was empty. Picked clean. ROBBED! I had been robbed! Well, actually my bees had been robbed, but indirectly, so had I. Now it all made sense. The thousands of bees I saw weren't my bees, although from a distance I can probably be excused for mistaking them for my own. Instead they were a "feral" colony, which means a lawless uncivilized tribe of honey robbing monsters. Come to think of it, it was a "flash bee mob".

In my mind, I can reconstruct the events that led up to this unjust raid. Back in the spring the same ungrateful lawless bunch of deviant bees had rebelled against me and left en mass. Being the rebellious, irresponsible, anarchist types that they were, they probably spent their time all summer drinking fermented nectar and laying around the clover fields, probably playing pranks on each other and terrorizing the animals of the field and forest just for kicks. They knew that they should be gathering nectar and pollen and making stores of honey for the winter, but they were free spirits. They couldn't be held down by societal norms and tradition. What future is there in all work and no play anyway? So they buzzed around at all hours of the day and night when decent, hard working bees were diligently making honey and getting a good night's rest for the next day's work. They probably flew around to other colonies and tried to get other young bees to hang out with them and spread their anti-social behavior to other hives. I suspect that being the counter-culture types that they had shown themselves to be, many of them spent their days lounging around on poppy blooms without a care in the world.

Then one day something happened. A storm came and they had to head back to the hive for shelter. While in the hive for four days, they emptied the pantry and started complaining that there was nothing to eat in that place. The queen and the hive workers acted amazed at this revelation and then had the nerve to point out that they can't make honey with fermented nectar and poppy blooms. And a fine mess they had now. When the storm passed and the temperature dropped, the wise old queen (well, actually she is only a few months old, but they don't know that) told them that it was a harbinger. Winter was coming and they would all starve. "So now you will see where all of your living free has gotten you." she told them sternly.

Fletch

"We gotta do something, and fast!" said Fletch, who was the bee that all of the other bees looked up to as a leader. He was the one that taught them how to ferment nectar. So he devised a plan. "You remember that stupid slave labor camp of a hive we left in the spring?" he asked. Some of the older bees remembered although most of them were too young and only had the stories they had been told to go on. "Those fools were always working, gathering nectar, gathering pollen, making honey on and on and on every day. I bet they have gallons of the stuff."

So the plan was formulated to "borrow" some honey. They would pull it off as a flash mob so nobody would see it coming. They would all just kind of mull around the field around their old haunt and wait for the signal. Once they got it, they would rush in, overpower the dozen or so guards at the hive entrance, and take just enough honey to get them through the winter. "They have way more than they need anyway." he said, "That top section alone has to have two gallons in it. We'll just take a gallon or so. They'll never miss it."

The next day they were up early and out of the hive at daybreak. "They're up to something." the queen told the workers, "In all of the time we have been here, they have never gotten out of bed before ten. I hope they don't get into trouble."

Bee Flash Mob - Amazing!

As they had planned, they all buzzed around the field looking innocent, sitting on grass blades, in trees, and in the weeds, waiting for Fletch to give the signal. Suddenly they saw him fly straight up one hundred feet into the air and then dive straight for the hive entrance. That was their cue. They all rushed in and shoved their way into the hive. There was more resistance than they anticipated and there were many more guards than a dozen. Early on they realized that they had underestimated the task and that there would be casualties. Suddenly the fun raid on their old colony had turned violent, but it was too late to turn back. They needed the honey and were willing to sacrifice a few bees if necessary. They pushed forward, each bee fighting his way into the hostile hive, dodging stingers, and shoving weaker bees out of the way, finally reaching the prize, a solid wall of honey comb bursting with honey. They savagely tore away the wax cappings and filled their honey sacks with the golden prize, then fought their way back out and back to their own hive.

The queen knew as the first bees arrived back home that a terrible thing had happened. She begged them to turn back, to stop, to at least leave the majority of the honey for the hive they were robbing, but they were beyond reason and beyond remorse. Bee after bee, hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands flew into the hive and dropped their ill gotten treasure on the floor as the workers scrambled to move it into the storage areas. They avoided the stern, disapproving gaze of the queen as they made their way back to the entrance to return to the besieged hive and continue their unjust mob action.

People "Flash Mob" - LAME!

Twenty minutes later, it was over. The raided hive was in shambles. Guards lay all around, exhausted from the futile attempt to fend of the raiders. The workers wandered among the empty combs, dazed and unable to comprehend that three months of work was gone, and now it was they who would starve, not the unjust mob. It wasn't fair. It was wrong, criminal even. Where was the justice?

This morning I went down to my bee yard and packed up my bee hives on a trailer and carefully moved them up the hill closer to home so I can keep a better watch on them. They are now set up where I can see them from my office desk. They won't starve. If needed, I will feed them through the winter. Now, instead of enjoying the bounty of their work, I will be feeding them a lot of syrup. But that's OK.

Standing there looking at the empty hives, I felt the way the father must have felt on the movie A Christmas Story when the neighbor's hounds broke into the kitchen and stole the Christmas turkey, leaving nothing but wing bone and the wonderful smell of roasted turkey. All of the great plans I had for my fall honey are gone, one drop at a time to some rouge colony who not only rebelled and left me in the spring, but returned to add injury to insult by robbing their former coworkers.

For those who think that "Flash Mobs" and technology are something new, I say, once again, that bees invented that centuries ago. Keep trying.

UPDATE: The invaders returned, but this time I was there to do something about it. (Click the video to watch full screen)

A Sticky Situation

Despite my best efforts and hard work, I managed to produce some honey my first year. Apparently sometime between they trying to leave, being captured, and succeeding in leaving and my various bumbling attempts to help them be happy, they managed to get out some and collect some nectar.

This past weekend, I was happy to collect ten frames of honey. Not a lot for any serious bee keeper, but let's face it. I am hardly serious. I was perfectly content with my sixteen pints of golden goodness! My wife was less thrilled for reasons that will become obvious, but can be summed up in her question "why are all of the doorknobs in the house sticky?"

I don't know much about processing honey, that I will readily admit. I knew from some conversations with some real beekeepers at the class I attended that since I was making "chunk" or "cut comb" honey, I could get by without investing five hundred dollars in a fancy shmancy centrifugal honey extraction machine which looks like an ice cream maker on growth hormones. The problem with cut comb honey though is that the honey is all inside the wax cells. That means that when you cut some and put it in a jar, it looks kind of naked just sitting there with no honey to keep it company. Some more honey is needed to fill in the jar around the honey comb, and that is where honey extraction comes in. Since I didn't have the equipment and was making up as I went anyway, this turned out to be an adventure.

The first job was to persuade the bees that they should give me the honey that they had been working so hard on storing up. I tried reasoning with them using the politician's approach. They had so much honey, and I had none. It wasn't fair to me that they had excess and I had none. They should be happy to donate a portion of their money...er...honey to me so that we could all enjoy it equally. The bees explained to me in a very buzzy and menacing way that I didn't have any honey because I didn't gather nectar or bother making any, but having kept up with the news lately, I was ready for this argument. I told them that I couldn't gather nectar or make honey because I was already working full time just to pay the rent and buy food. I asked if they had any idea how much medical insurance costs these days. I explained that I was disadvantaged because they were born into royalty (their mother was a queen) and therefore had a huge money...I mean honey advantage that I didn't have. Therefore, it was only fair that they should share the fruits of that advantage with me, a poor, uneducated person without pollen sacks on my legs or a little sippy straw on my mouth that would let me get nectar from flowers.

Like most elitist, wealthy, greedy mobs they immediately ganged up an me and attempted to cheat me out of what was rightfully mine through violence. I gave up reasoning and, still taking cues from politicians, took it by force. After all, if they were too selfish to see that I needed honey too, what else could be done but resort to legal force?

After collecting ten frames of tax honey, I happily went back to the house to see if I could figure out how to get it out of those cells that they had so faithfully worked to get it into.

Conscious of my wife's natural aversion to things that stick, I decided the best thing to do right from the start was cover the kitchen table with plastic sheeting. That way, all I had to do to clean up was carefully remove it and throw it away...just like when I painted the living room with the furniture in it. Bad example...really bad example.

Once everything was covered with plastic, I retrieved the new plastic pail that I had reserved just for this task. The very knowledgeable and wise man at the beekeeping class had explained to me that all I had to do was cut the cappings (the thin white wax covering on the cells) and lean the comb inside the frame over in the bucket and in an hour or so, most of the honey would run out. I could then use that honey to pack sections of comb with. Simple enough. I started by uncapping a frame of honey and setting it in the bucket as advised. I somehow managed to drip a little honey in my lap doing that and some (unbeknown to me) somehow managed to drip onto the floor. Our floors are honey colored anyway, so naturally I didn't notice. After an hour of being very bored (ever watch paint dry? This is more boring), I checked the bucket and found about half a cup of honey in it. That would be good news except the frame holds about a pint and a half. I quickly realized that this wasn't going to get me anywhere and an alternate plan was needed, and quickly. You see, the whole time I was waiting for the honey to drain I was nibbling on honey and comb. I was in serious danger of eating it all before I could get it in the jars! If the first frame took hours to drain, I was going to be there for days draining all ten! Apparently the "expert" who had offered the advise was a fake..or maybe I wasn't listening because I was watching the swarm of several thousand angry bees trying to figure out why we just tore their hive apart.

I went to the store and bought two stainless steel stock pots. I brought them home and drilled holes in the bottom of one and then washed them both. I made a screen filter (don't worry, it was new screen) to go between them. I then crushed the honey comb, releasing the honey but mixing the wax all in with it. I then placed the glob of wax and honey in the top pot (the one with holes in it) and let it drain through the screen into the bottom pot. After five minutes the top pot was empty and the bottom one had mostly honey in it. I was onto something! I decided that a second stage of filtering was needed, so I ran it back through the filter pot, this time with cheese cloth instead of screen in it. The results were beautiful! The bottom pot had pure, golden, very sticky honey in it and the wax was all in the screen and top pot! Which brings up the that sticky subject again. Somehow while transferring honey and wax between pots, I managed to get more than little bit all over the table, which was now fairly awash in honey. No big deal though...I had the plastic on it.

About this time my wife returned from work to find her kitchen covered in bee boxes, jars, wax, and copious amounts of honey coating it all. She (wisely) chose not to look too closely and expressed her confidence that I would clean it all up ("AND I MEAN ALL OF IT!") when I was done. I noticed that the honey had taken on a life of its own and was now slowly, slowly creeping towards the edge of the table. I needed to hurry up!

So...one frame down, ten to go! And I was only three hours into it. I really needed to hurry up! Once I finished the "trial run" with the first frame, I set up a more efficient "production line" for separating the honey from the comb. Of course, this meant handling much larger quantities of honey..quarts at a time instead of pints. This naturally led to some unforseen problems such as the filter becoming clogged and overflowing down the side of the catch pot and onto..you guessed it, the table. At this point I was building little levees with leftover bees wax to keep the loose honey at bay, but they were in danger of being breeched. OK, so they were breached a few times which led to a slow motion disaster as honey ran over the edge of the table and pooled onto my shoes.

By the time I got that last jar closed and washed (for some reason they were all sticky!), I was delighted with my haul. It was so pretty sitting there in sixteen jars on the kitchen counter (I had to avoid the table...it was a mess!)

I guess I must have let the smell of fresh honey get out of the house. Before I could finish my last batch of honey, I heard a knock at the door. I went to see who it was (hey, I just realized why the doorknob was sticky!) and it was an acquaintance whom had not visited in over a year. "Is that honey?" he asked as soon as he came in. I offered him a jar. Before he could leave, I heard a woman's voice. In came my mother-in-law whom I had also not seen in almost a year. "Oh, is that honey?", she asked, eying the jar that the previous thief was taking out the door. I gave her a jar. "Don't you think you should let me take your grandmother some?" she asked, "I am on my way over there." My wife called and asked if she wanted a jar, and she did. "You know, your uncle is visiting. Better bring him some too!". Did I mention that my mother had come to watch the show of me extracting the honey? Of course I couldn't not give her a jar before she left. My honey was leaving faster than I could get it into jars!

"Don't forget your daughter wants some too", my wife reminded me, "I think you should give her two because she is moving away and it will have to last her until she comes home to visit." Yea. True. I then realized that I had promised a jar to my nieces and nephew who felt they deserved it because they had kept such a vigilant watch over my bees when they came to visit their flower gardens and drink the swimming pool water. I set aside a jar for them. "Don't forget your other sister." my mother helpfully offered, " you can mail it to her."

This was crazy! I had worked all this time to collect the honey from the hives, extract it, put it in jars, and would be cleaning sticky and bees wax off everything we owned (I found some on the lawn mower...not sure how that happened), and these ungrateful people were carting it off before I could even have time to admire it! What right did they have asking for my honey anyway? I started out with sixteen pints and was already down to half of that, and they hadn't been jarred for a day yet! At this rate, it would be completely gone by week's end! I had wanted it to last all winter! Sure, I still had enough, but I had wanted to have extra just in case. I started to get irritated, not at anyone in particular, but just that my honey was being carted right out of my house faster than I could....then a thought hit me. "Whose honey? Who made it?"

Suddenly I felt silly and humble. I hadn't made that honey, I had taken it from the bees. Did I worry about the work that they had put into it? Heck no...yet here I was getting upset about "my" stash dwindling before my eyes because why? Other people wanted to enjoy it too? And they hadn't stolen it, they had either asked or had it offered. Some even offered to pay me for it, although I refused

In the end, I realized that although I did manage the bees (sort-of), they did all of the real work that produced that honey and I should be glad to have the six or eight pints that I have left for myself. In a moment of pride and selfishness, I had forgotten that the whole reason I got into beekeeping was to have something I enjoyed doing, not to stockpile liquid gold. I realized that I was happy that my friends and family wanted to participate in my hobby and that something as simple as a jar of honey could bring them such pleasure. I quickly made peace with the situation and am now happy to share my bounty with others. Don't get me wrong...the lesson I learned wasn't a "Progressive" one. I still don't think any of those people had a RIGHT to the honey, and that is the point. I chose to share my hobby with them and they were happy to accept. Things are as they should be.

Besides, next year I will have four times as much...and let's see those bees keep me from taking it all!

"Bee U" - Getting a degree in Beeology

Its been a while since I wrote about my bees. This is for a couple of very good reasons. The first is that my fingers all fell off and they had a backorder on replacements. The second is that my bees haven't really been doing much to write about anyway, so I couldn't have asked for a better time to have it happen.

That actually isn't entirely true. You probably spotted the little exaggeration I slipped in there. The truth about it is that the bees are ALWAYS doing something, it is just hard to know what they are doing when one doesn't bother checking on them as often as one should. Which is difficult to do with no fingers. The truth is that they were actually very busy doing the boring kind of work that bees seem to live for. They have been hard at work gathering nectar and pollen and waving their little magic antenna over them to make honey. And have they made honey! I wasn't really expecting much in the way of the good stuff this year, but they pleasantly surprised me with what I am estimating to be around thirty pounds (that is about three gallons) of delicious honey. I am excited.

During this boring time when they were too busy working to be mischievous or look for a better place to live or sting me, I signed up for a two day course on beekeeping that is presented by the Mississippi Department of Agriculture. This was largely because I really would like to get to the point where I know what I am doing with the bees, and also because I agreed to go to the course as part of a cost sharing deal the state had with new beekeepers. All I had to do was spent a million dollars on beekeeping equipment and they would go halves with me or $168, whichever was smaller. In return for this, I had to agree to attend one of their courses. I don't know if you know much about the Department of Agriculture, but they are a tough bunch when someone doesn't hold up their end of the deal. They threatened to confiscate my hives with my bees still in them, and anyone who earns their living as a "bee repo man" is not going to get any lip from me. I figured it was better to just go to the classes.

This was a beginner's course, which is good because I am a coarse beginner. Somewhere along the line though either I dozed off or they got their agenda out of whack because they were teaching how to treat for hive beetles, mites, and other parasites first thing. Now, I don't know about you, but I have a hard time thinking about beetles and mites first thing after breakfast, so I was a little disoriented. When question time rolled around, I asked (rather innocently, I thought) when you put the bees in the hive. The very educated doctor of entomology from Mississippi State University smiled at my clever joke and ignored me the rest of the day. I obviously had skipped ahead.

Once they taught us how to treat for mites and other bee-killing things, then we started learning about how to make queens. I always thought queens were born into royalty, but apparently you can skip over that by putting larvae in a cup that looked like half of a pea pod and whispering to the worker bees that the princess is getting cold. They go right to work and start treating her like a queen, apparently. Who knew?

When that guy got done, it was question time again. I raised my hand and asked (rather innocently, I thought), who was taking care of the princess in the pea if we haven't put the bees in the hive yet. He laughed at my not so funny joke and also ignored me. Or tried to. I raised my hand again and asked if the queen laid eggs, then the workers hatched and took care of her, but then realized that brought up the age old which came first, the queen bee or the egg dilemma and he obviously didn't know the answer to it because he stared at me for a full minute and then asked if there were any serious questions. Apparently I had jumped ahead again.

The third class was on how to extract honey from our hives. Now I know I am a beginner, but I was almost certain that you had to put your bees in your hive before you took the honey out, which just goes to show how much of a beginner I really am. I was almost too ashamed of my ignorance to ask a question. Almost. I started out cautiously, once question time was once again upon us and everyone else had their questions answered and the teacher finally noticed me standing on my chair jumping up and down and swinging my hands wildly in the air. I realized that I had made too many assumptions early on and that was probably what had confused them. I decided it was best to give them a little background to predicate my question on.

"I, like all of these folks out here," I began, "am a rank amateur beekeeper. As such, I am very ignorant and, like my companions here, don't know anything much worth knowing. But I am here to learn. So let me give you a little background so maybe I can get a straight answer to my question and help some of these poor ignorant plebes in the process. A few months ago, I ignorantly purchased some hives and some bees and, like an idiot, just stuck the bees in the hive. I didn't treat for beetles, didn't treat for mites, didn't raise any queens, and for the life of me don't know where the honey all went. But I must have gotten some good bees, because despite all of that, they still somehow managed to produce some honey. Now my question is simply this: If I were to do this thing by the book, so to speak, when would I be putting the bees in the hive?"

The entire room was silent as they contemplated the eloquence, the thoughtfulness, and the obvious insight that my question led to. It was apparently even more profound than I imagined, because the teacher stood in front of the room on the small stage scratching his gray head and chewing his lower lip. He looked around at the rest of the bee experts gathered on the stage and they all shrugged and shook their heads. I had apparently unintentionally stumped them all. And it seemed like such a basic question to me.

After gathering into a small group on stage and discussing it quietly amongst themselves, the teacher said that he would like to discuss this with me after lunch once we got to the bee yard. I realized that he was trying to buy time to research this difficult line of inquiry I had started and graciously agreed to his terms. We were immediately dismissed for lunch, and I realized that I had earned a new air of respect and awe from my fellow beekeeping amateurs which was evidenced by their pointing and whispering "that's him" as I walked past them.

In the bee yard, I searched high and low for the kind gentleman that had agreed to enlighten me on when I should put the bees in the hive, but he must have had a family emergency because he was nowhere to be found and nobody could remember seeing him. He must have one of those forgettable faces, because they didn't seem to even remember being on stage with him at all. I was disappointed, but resolved to continue to try to get as much as I could out of the remainder of the course.

That afternoon in the bee yard, we learned to split colonies, rear queens, capture swarms in trees, and how to figure out if your bees were happy or sad. We learned how great bees were for farmers, and why crop dusting could be dangerous for them. We learned how to feed them using various techniques including with a 55 gallon drum of sugar water, but at the close of the day, I still didn't know when I should put them in the hive. Maybe tomorrow would be give me the answers I needed.

As I drove home that night, I was very troubled by my obvious lack of knowledge of beekeeping. By the time I arrived home, I had formulated a plan to coax my bees out of my hive so I could somehow store them somewhere else until I learned when to put them back in. I was actually getting excited about the prospect of correcting my terrible error, but it was dark when I got home and one of the things I had learned at the class was to never, ever work with the bees after dark. Apparently bad things happen that involve medical helicopters.

The next day, I was excited. Certainly at some point today, we would finally get to the topic of when to install the bees in the hive. I had no idea that it came so late in the process and was ashamed of my questions that I had asked the day before because they showed my ignorance of the topic so obviously. I resolved to keep my mouth closed the second day and only ask questions that pertained to the topics being taught, then once they got to the part about putting the bees in the hive, I would have my questions answered and wouldn't even need to ask them.

The first class of the day was on "bee compatible plants for your garden." I suppose it makes sense to plant a garden before getting the bees because they will need compatible plants right away, no doubt. This class was followed by one on how to get your bees ready for spring. I got excited because I was sure that someone had mentioned purchasing bees in the spring, and certainly you would need to install them soon after purchasing them. I listed with rapt attention as they talked about nectar flows, temperature, more mite treatments, and various other things but to my disappointment, not a word about installing the bees.

The rest of the day went much like the first. I learned about when to buy bees and what types to buy, but nothing about putting them in the hives. I learned how to work with bees using smoke and various tools, but now when to install them. By the end of the day, I was more confused than when I started. As the day was wrapping up there was a gathering of the students and a final question and answer session. "Any questions?" I resisted. "Anything at all? Remember, the only dumb question is the one you didn't ask." Since I had asked this particular question three times already, I reasoned that it couldn't possibly be dumb, so I raised my hand slowly. "Any questions at all?" I raised it higher. "Anyone in the back? Over here? No more questions?"

There wasn't a chair to stand on in the bee yard, but I found a plastic pail nearby and was jumping up and down on it waving my hands. "Don't swat at 'em like that," one of the instructors said, helpfully, "it just makes them angry."

"I wasn't swatting at the bees, I was waving to the guy asking about questions." I told him. "That's who I was talking about." he replied, dryly.

In the end, I guess I have to admit that I learned a lot. I know how to handle swarms, how to split hives to make two new ones, how to harvest honey, how to treat for various diseases, how to plant garden veggies that the bees will like, you name it. Except for one thing. I still don't know when to put them in the hives. Maybe they're going to cover that in next year's course.

Tall Bee Tales

One thing I have noticed since starting to raise honey bees is that people seem to love to talk about them. Nearly everyone I meet who finds out I have bee hives has some story about bees that they are just dying to tell me. Some are entertaining, some are fascinating, and some are complete nonsense. I am starting to understand what it is like to be a famous athlete, except for the fame part. And the money. And the talent. But you get the point. I am sure there is many a quarterback out there who would gladly give a year's salary and royalties minus agent fees to not hear one more story of some high school football game back in '78 where the fate of the free world was riding on the story teller not messing up this pass. There is something in people that, once they find out something unusual about a someone, they feel the irresistible urge to corner this poor stranger and tell them all about something.

I have noticed this phenomenon a lot with pet owners too. I know people love their pets, and I am glad because another way I use up my surplus time and money besides bee keeping is working with an animal rescue. I can't count how many times I have been manning an adoption booth completely surrounded by dogs and cats in cages and some woman comes up and insists on telling us about every pet she ever had. As far as I can tell, there is no point in this other than to help me dispose of my surplus time that I would otherwise have been talking to potential adopters or something silly like that. It is a lot like what new moms talk about, only they typically don't impose their bodily fluids  stories on non-new moms. There seems to be a code of honor amongst them that keeps the best stories within the group but passed from generation to generation to preserve the ability of the human race to properly burp a newly fed kid. Pet stories are not so well guarded.

And they don't just tell us about each animal, they tell us what they liked, what tricks they could do, what their personality was, and more often than you would imagine, what they vomited all over the couch last week. I have often wondered how long they would stand around listening to me if I started telling them about each of the over 600 animals we have had.

Killer Bees

I am not sure what the compulsion is that causes people to do this, but it seems to be rooted in a combination of the need to find acceptance from strangers through common interest and a complete lack of sense of what others care about listening to. The saving grace of Bee Stories is that people usually only have a catalog of two or three at the most, so there is less danger of getting sucked into an hour long ramble about their cute potty habits. The stories that are told though are done in a breathless, amazed tone that is normally reserved for natural disaster or spitting cobra stories, and they usually involve someone getting their just deserts for desert. Very often, they center around the fabled "Killer Bees" that seem to cluster around Hollywood.

I was at dinner the other day with some folks that we have known a long time but recently discovered I was a bee keeper. They could hardly wait their turn to tell me their favorite bee story. First up was a "bees in nature" story. An older lady told me about how she had bees for years, and really enjoyed them. They were a feral colony that had built hives in an old house on her property. She would check on them every year and they were always there, year after year. Then one year, they were just gone. Where do I imagine they went?

My guess is they died. They only live a couple of months anyway, except for the queen and a few workers who live through the winter. A farmer probably sprayed pesticide on his crops and the bees brought it back to the hive, poisoning the rest of them. Somehow my explanation didn't seem to bring her the joy of closure. Note to self. The next time someone asked what could have happened to the bees, tell them that they found a better place in a land flowing with milk and honey. Don't tell them that they were poisoned and they all died.

The next storyteller up relayed a story "I saw with my own eyes" which is a good indication that not only they didn't see it, but the fifteen people the story passed through before reaching him also didn't "see it with their own eyes". This was a "survival against all odds" story. He was working at a paper mill, and logs would come in with bee hives inside them. The bees would be swarming around the logs and follow them through the the log handling equipment...the chop saws, the debarker, the chipper, and somehow, through all of this, they would manage to dodge the blades and emerge from the other side, swarming around some sweet smelling paper on a shiny new roll. Wasn't that something?

It was something alright. Something that I didn't really believe, but I smiled and looked amazed with the same expression I would have when a woman told me about how her Chihuahua always knew the phone was about to ring and who was calling.

The next story up was my favorite kind of bee story, the "Just deserts" story. There was this guy that was always running his mouth. A real know it all. One day they found an old log that was full of honey comb. The know it all was telling them all about how good wild honey was and to demonstrate, he broke off a chunk of comb and started munching away on it. Naturally there was a bee in it and it stung the inside of his mouth. He had to be airlifted to the hospital and derned near died! Ain't that something?

It was something alright. Something that I really didn't believe. I kept the smile in place.

Close on the heels of this story was one of the most common, the Swarm Story. Apparently bee swarms are amazing sights to non-beekeepers and they take on all kinds of menacing qualities. They are always on the verge of attacking innocent children, dogs, and metropolitan areas until something happens just in time. Turns out that what always happens in these stories it the swarm leaves. This I can believe.

What I can't believe is a story that was told as fact where these guys were horsing around with a boat when they should have been working, running it up and down a river inlet to see how fast it would go. I like this story best because it combines all of the elements in a neat little package. Apparently, all of this racket of the boat running up and down the river stirred up a swarm of bees ("Bees in Nature"). Not appreciating being waken up from their afternoon nap, these bees got together and decided to do something about it and descended on the boat ("Swarm Story").

When the guy in the boat saw the swarm coming, he hit the throttle and ran as fast as he could from the bees, but the noise of the boat just irritated them more, so they gave chase ("Killer Bees"). He disappeared around the corner looking terrified. Five minutes later, he came tearing back around the corner, bees in hot pursuit and disappeared around the bend the other way. Five minutes later, here comes the boat, here come the bees. Bend. Boat. Bees. Bend. Boat. Bees. The story ends, of course, when he finally runs out of gas and the boat motor dies. He dives in the water to avoid the swarm, but with the noise gone, instead of attacking him, they fly away, leaving him in the middle of the river long after dark ("Just Deserts").

Now some of you reading this may consider me a hypocrite for making fun of people telling bee stories while I tell some pretty outlandish ones right here, but that is my prerogative. You see, in order to make fun of stories, you have to know why they should be made fun of. I happen to know key facts about bee behavior that uniquely qualify me to determine how legitimate a story is. For example, in the story about the boat, I happen to know that bees don't care about the noise of a motor, and were probably just attracted to his aftershave.

I am sure there are many other bee stories in store for me as I continue to become known as "that weird guy down the way that keeps bees." Never fear, I will always pass them along (although I may take credit for them myself it they are good enough).

My Mischevious Bees

Bees are known for a lot of things. Pretty high on the list (at the top if you ask a five year old) is stinging. Close behind is making honey, buzzing, and chasing cartoon characters. For the older, more technically minded, they are known as social insects for their amazing ability to work together to create things that look like a combination of art and confection, honey comb. They can communicate using scents and special dances (two things they have in common with me), and they are known as the friends of the farmer for pollinating crops that we all rely on for our wide variety of produce and fruits.

But my bees are known for something else. Being mischievous. I am not sure what type of bee they are, but from their sense of humor, I suspect they may be British bees. They are always getting into trouble and causing me headaches. For example, last week I was visiting my sister who lives about a quarter mile away from me. She said that Micah, my nephew had something to tell me.

"Uncle Matt, your bee was crawling on me." he said, very seriously.

"Really. Did it sting you?" I asked.

"No."

"Were you scared?"

"No. It just crawled on my arm and my shirt." he said.

"How do you know it was my bee?" I asked him.

"Because...because it looked like your bee."

Another time my niece texted me to let me know that one of my bees was in her flowers and wondered if I wanted to come get it. This is the same niece whose name I changed from Camie to "Scamie" for always trying to scam a way over to my house or get me to come to hers. I told her the bee would probably find his way back before dark.

Now it seems that my bees are everywhere getting into all kinds of trouble. Another nephew who lives nearly a mile away informed me that my bees were in his trash with an air about him that said I should keep up with my bees better than that and not allow them to play in the garbage.

My bees also start trouble around their hives too. A few weeks ago about ten thousand of them decided to go on a picnic and never came back. It was the culmination of a couple of weeks of increasingly noticeable mischief that they had been creating.

I first became aware their naughty nature when they started playing pranks on me to see if I would notice. For example, they would wait until they saw me coming down the hill, then all run outside and crowd around the front of the hive, completely covering it with themselves. As I approached the hives, I knew something was up because I could hear their buzzy little laughter from several yards away as some scouts buzzed out "SHHH...HERE HE COMES!"

I don't know what the joke was, but it was funny to them because the more I walked around the more they buzz-laughed. Eventually they sent one of the braver bees over to me to try to get my attention. He buzzed around my face, over my head, under my chin, between my knees, around my waste, and back to my face. He was obviously in on some great joke, but being new to the language and culture, I didn't get it and he finally gave up and went back to the hive.

The next day as I approached the hives, I noticed that they had again clustered on the outside. This time, they seemed to be forming a pattern but I couldn't quite place it. It was almost like they were trying to communicate with me, but still, I was too ignorant of their methods to make any sense of it.

Still, I couldn't help thinking that they were working together to tell me something.

A few days later I realized that I had forgotten to feed them so I rushed down the hill with some sugar water. Again, they must have seen me coming because when I got there, they were clustered to the outside of the hive and seemed to be forming a shape again. I tried to tell myself that it was just coincidence, that they really aren't that smart, but I found it interesting that the shape they made was almost identical to the one they had made a few days before. I snapped a photo to use as a reference and decided to do some research on bee communications when I got time.

I gave them some syrup and a good pep talk and went back to other tasks. A week or so later, I remembered that I had forgotten to fed them again (oops! I am new at this, you know), so I went back down the hill to feed them some syrup. As was becoming their habit, they clustered on the outside of the box, but they were now clustering in a different manner, more spread out and random looking. I had not gotten a chance to do any research on bee communication, so I fed them and snapped another photo for my research.

When I finally got around to looking up information on why bees cluster on the outside of the hive, I was amazed to find that they actually were trying to tell me something, although they don't have the individual intelligence to realize that they were, they were attempting to communicate by clustering on the outside of the hive. This clustering can mean several things, but it is difficult to know which one. It could mean that it was too hot in the hive and they need more ventilation or that they were getting too crowded. It could also mean that they were not getting enough nectar and weren't being fed enough supplemental syrup. That couldn't be it. I had fed them enough syrup to give them all cavities by now. Well, except when I forgot.

I decided to spend some time in the bee yard just watching them to see if I could find any clues on what may be the problem. At first when I got there, there were no bees outside at all. They must not have heard me coming since I took a different route and brought a lawn chair to sit in while I studied them. After a while, a few bees stuck their heads out and saw me, then went back inside. Soon more and more bees started coming out and frantically moving around the side of the hive in an ever-changing cluster.

This was one that I had not read about, and I was intrigued. What did it mean? I couldn't see any real pattern to it...it seemed to be totally random, but occasionally I could swear that it almost made a recognizable shape. Eventually I decided that I was imagining things, just like when you watch clouds go by you see shaped in them. It was my mind hoping to see something that I could decipher that caused their random movements to appear to be something intelligent. I gave up and went home after watching them for about an hour.

I have watched the time-lapse video of the mischievous little buggers over and over, but I can't make out what they are trying to do. It just looks like so much random wandering around to me.

I guess as I work more with bees and become more familiar with their instincts, habits, and processes, I will eventually be able to decipher some of the complex and often confusing things that they do. One of the main reason bee keepers list for continuing to raise bees is that they enjoy learning the mysteries of the honeybee. I look forward to the day when I can tell what my bees need just by looking at the hive!

Until then, I suppose they will continue to find new ways to be mischievous and play their little pranks on me.

UPDATE: I was notified by a reliable source that one of my mischievous bees was spotted about twenty miles from its hive. Keep spotting them Lissie.

Movin' on up.

Three weeks into beekeeping I was gaining some confidence. I had kept my queens alive and they were laying eggs like a hyperactive chicken. My original 40,000 bees had already increased to at least double the original number. They were eating sugar water like it was candy. Liquid candy. And best of all, they were building comb and storing honey. I decided I must be a natural beekeeper. My bees were happy bees. They weren't like some bees that cause trouble, getting upset when things don't go their way. They didn't loiter idly around the bee yard looking for trouble, stinging wild animals for fun and spitting wax to look tough. No, my bees were jolly, happy, honey making fellows (and gals).

Then one day as I was coming home from a quick trip to the hardware store, I decided to swing by the ol' complex and check on my tenants. Just to make sure they were having a good day. As I pulled up by the hives, I noticed an odd fog in the air. When I opened the door, I also noticed a loud buzzing, almost like thousands of bees were flying all around my truck. Actually, thousands of bees were flying around my truck. And over the hives, and over the field. It looked like an entire army of bees had taken flight. I quickly closed my door and went through a mental checklist of things I had read about beekeeping. What did the books say about thousands of bees out for a stroll at once? It hardly seemed normal, but what did it mean?

As I looked at them, a little word came into my mind that seemed to suddenly shoot to the surface of my thoughts and burst through with explosive force. SWARM!

Get back in your room...all ten thousand of you!

I didn't have my bee suit and equipment with me, so I tore up the hill in my truck and grabbed my box of beekeeping gear and headed back down the hill. I was gone a total of three or four minutes tops. When I pulled back up by the hives, it was quiet and peaceful. No swarming bees, no loud buzzing. It was if it had never happened. I was baffled. I looked around to see if I saw any bees still flying around. I saw a few way in the top of a tree, flying around that...what was that thing? That big, black, thing in the top of the tree that looked like...looked like...oh! A swarm of bees!

Actually, it was two swarms of bees. Apparently my tenants weren't so happy after all.

I knew I had to do something. I wasn't just going to let twenty thousand bees leave without paying their rent (Honey Money). I had to get them back before they found a new place to live. Problem was, they were in the top of a tall skinny tree and there is no way tall fat me was climbing that tall skinny tree. Then I though of Scooter. He's skinny! Somehow I didn't think I would persuade him to climb the tree and capture thousands of bees though, so I came up with another plan. If you can't get to the bees, bring the bees to you.

I called Scooter and told him to bring his truck with a ladder and a come-along that we use to stretch fence wire. As soon as he got there, I set the ladder up by the tree and climbed as high as I could to tie a rope around it. I then tied the other end of the rope to the come-along hook, and hooked the come-along to his truck bumper. It was nice of him to volunteer his truck like that.

As I tightened the rope, the tree started leaning towards us, slowly bending. The swarm in the top moved closer and closer to the ground. I kept pulling it until it was about eight feet from the ground. At that point, the trunk of the tree started cracking and I was afraid it would break, slinging the bees down to the ground. There were two problems with that plan. One, they would just fly off and find a new tree, and two, I was between the bees and the ground.

Never Try This At Home!

Since I couldn't bring them all the way down, I decided it would be fair to meet them halfway and negotiate their return. I backed my truck up directly under the swarm and then climbed onto the toolbox in the back, which put me just a couple of feet away from the swarm. I picked up a five gallon water cooler with a lid in the back of my truck and, removing the lid, eased the swarm down into the canister. Then I gave the limb a quick shake, and the whole ball of bees fell into the cooler. Well, most of them. A couple thousand then entertained themselves by buzzing around me in a most disturbing manner.

Once the queen was in the bucket (I know there is a joke there, but I can't quite find it), the other bees wanted nothing more than to be in the bucket with her, so they all clung to the outside of it. They eventually all gathered on the outside of the cooler, and I put it in a plastic tub and drove the whole thing up to the house where I quickly put together a makeshift hive, transferred them to it, and set it back down the hill with the other hives.

Victory! You can just call me King Bee. The King of Sting. Buzz Lightyear. Apiaire Extraordinaire. "Money-G" of the Honey Bee.

Bucket-O-Bees

Two days later, after placing an order for a whole new hive setup for my now content tenants from a customer service lady who sounded as sweet as the honey the bees would soon be making me, I went to check on them and see how they were liking their new, spacious apartment. When I took the lid off, I was surprised just how spacious it was. In fact, it was not crowded at all. In fact, it was...abandoned.

"Sorry sir, your order has already shipped" the sour customer service lady said when I called with the bad news. And to think, I called her "Honey" and "Sweetie" last time we talked! I won't make the mistake of wasting my excellent bee humor on her again!

With nothing left to do, I disassembled the have and evicted the stragglers back to their original hive. As I drove back up the hill, for some reason the theme song from the old Jeffersons show was going through my head.

"Well we're moving on up

Way up high

To a deluxe apartment in the sky..."

Who's Afraid of a Little Bee Sting?

I am a new beekeeper, which also means I am a pretty poor beekeeper - in both senses of the word. I don't know what I am doing and you have to part with quite a few dollars to get set up for your first hives. I am not completely clueless though. Unlike when I got my new cell phone, I didn't throw the instructions in a drawer and spend the next two days screaming about how dumb my bees were. I actually studied for over a year before taking the plunge. I read up on beekeeping on the Internet, got some beekeeping books from the library, and watched lots of YouTube videos on everything from setting up hives to feeding (they eat sugar water if there isn't any nectar around) and how to avoid getting stung.

This last point is pretty interesting to me because I am slightly allergic to bee stings. Not "help I can't breathe" allergic, but more like "what happened to your hand...it looks like a sausage?!?" allergic. The basic techniques for not getting stung are:

1. Don't raise bees.
2. Con someone else into raising your bees.
3. Just let them keep their honey..I will get mine at the store.
4. Wear protective equipment.

Since 1-3 didn't work out for me, I reluctantly went with option 4. Well, that is to say I eventually and enthusiastically went to option 4. 

Uncle Will is a great guy, and when he found out I was going to get some honey bees, he was very interested. He asked lots of questions about them that I had no clue what the answer was ("oh, they call her a queen because she has little spikes on her head that look like a crown", "They don't actually like honey, they just use it as a bribe to keep the bears happy"). He even watched an extremely poorly made beekeeping video with me that was copyrighted in 1990 and had all of the flair of a dirty dishrag.

One of Uncle's favorite things to do while watching these videos is point out how they always harped on wearing protective equipment, but then went traipsing around the beeyard in shorts and flip-flops. I concluded from the number of experienced beekeepers I saw tending bees in less clothing than they would go to a social function in that all of that nonsense about getting stung was for the birds, not the bees. Leave it.

The first week I got the bees was exciting. I went to a bee farm in a nearby town and purchased two "nucleus packs" which are basically mini hives with several frames of comb, lots of eggs in the frames waiting to hatch, and some honey to get them through until they can find enough nectar. Heck, it was as easy as getting a new cell phone. Just open the box and start using it.

"There are HOW MANY bees in this box?" I asked the man selling me the bees? "About twenty thousand, give or take." he said. "In this little box? Are you sure?"

"Yup. Counted them myself this morning," he said with a smile, "but they may have invited some friends over." I hate smart alack bee keepers. Especially ones that I am handing over large bills to for a box that is emitting a very disturbing buzzing sound and is being held closed with a piece of duct tape that keeps popping loose.

"Wait till morning to put 'em in the hive," he said, "they crawl at night looking for their nest and warmth and the closest thing to them that is climbable and warm is your legs. I told one lady that and she insisted that she had to do it that night. I hope she had on long pants and not a skirt." he said, grinning.

"Ha," I told my uncle who had ridden with me to get the bees and opted to stay in the truck with the windows rolled up, "a fat lot that guy knows about bees. I mean, did you see him? He was wearing a bee veil and a jacket the whole time he was talking to me. He must be an amateur, for sure."

"How many bees did he say were in that box?" he asked, eying them in the bed of the truck.

The next day I put on my veil and a long sleeve shirt and jeans. I felt like an idiot dressing like that in the warm spring weather, looking like an amateur. Those guys in the video didn't wear all of this garb, but my wife had seen movies where people were stung to death by angry bees, so she insisted. "Leave the dog here!" she yelled as I was driving out of the yard to the beehives. "Why?" I asked. "Because I saw a movie where the dog started barking at the bees and it made them mad and they killed the man and the dog." "That's idiotic!" I shouted back. The dog stayed.

I actually got the bees in their new home, got them feeding on some sugar water, and all was well for a while. My uncle came with me the third day I had them and watched me feed them. I had fed them twice already wearing jeans and a tee shirt with no problems. They would land on me, but not sting me. That day I went late in the evening, and they apparently aren't as forgiving late in the day. I guess working like bees all day long will do that. For whatever reason, this time when I took the feeder from the hive, a handful of bees came with it to reclaim it. I ignored them. They landed on my hair and started crawling around and, I imagined, looking for a soft place to do their evil deed with their little sharp stinger. I ignored them. One dug through my hair and was scratching at my scalp and buzzing loudly. I couldn't ignore him. I did what I knew was the wrong thing and tried to brush him out of my hair. He stung my head, right on the top. Uncle chuckled.

The next couple of days, I wore a baseball cap to disguise the fact that my head had taken on a distinct cone shape. I noticed that when I wore the cap, they would land on it, but they couldn't get in my hair, so I just started wearing it when I fed them. No way I am putting on that stupid veil. Veils are for brides, not men and since I don't have any intention of being a bride, I don't have any intention of wearing a veil. Take that you money-grubbing bee supply store that preys on people's fears of getting stung just to sell them sissy veils that they don't even need.

It was going great. I was feeding them with no trouble with just jeans, a tee shirt, and a baseball cap and didn't have any problems. Then Uncle Will went with me to feed one afternoon. Once again, when I took the feeder from the hive, they followed me. I wasn't worried, I had my trusty baseball cap on. Only this time they didn't land on the cap, they landed on my neck. My neck seemed to be the most interesting place they had ever been. They strolled around, merrily buzzing as I tried to ignore them. One of the noticed an odd looking outcropping and decided to get a closer look. He crawled onto my ear and played me a nice little kazoo number called "Living on a Prayer."

After a while, the ear got boring and he ran out of tunes to buzz so he decided to do a little spelunking under my hat band. I knew he couldn't get under it, but he didn't. In fact, he was sure he could and once he recruited a few of his buddies, I was starting to think he was onto something. I ignored him as long as I could, merrily pouring sugar water all over my feet, the ground, and some nearby bushes as I tried to keep my hands steady, but eventually he wore me down. I am pretty sure he was almost completely under my hat band when I decided to snatch off my hat and shoo him away. It was a brilliant, inspired plan for getting my face stung, right under my temple.

"Well, he got me!" I said, casually to Uncle. He chuckled.

The next day I woke up and realized that there was a stranger in my bathroom. Half-awake, I had just done what most folks do when they first wake up in the morning and was washing my hands when, out of the corner of my eye in the dim bathroom, I caught an unfamiliar face looking at me. I jumped back, grabbing for the plunger, not the best self defense weapon, but much better than the toilet brush. I spun back around and flipped on the light, ready to attack the intruder. What I saw was a pudgy version of me. It was an obese twin brother that I had never met. My life was turned upside down...what happened? Why had we never met? Why was he so fat? Was it the stress of losing his family? I needed answers! What was the meaning of this sudden intrusion into my life by a fat, bloated even, version of me? What did he want?

Oh. That was the mirror. False alarm. But WOAH! What is wrong with my face! I then remembered dreaming that I was a balloon and someone was filling my head with hot air. It kept stretching and burning and itching and....oh. It was the bee sting. My entire face had swollen to twice its normal pudginess, which is pretty darned pudgy. I laughed. I couldn't help it, I looked so fat!

The next day, I ordered coveralls to go with the gloves and veil that I had tossed into the box they came in the day after getting bees. Now when I go to the bee yard, I suit up like I am going to a nuclear fallout site. I don't think it was the bee sting that convinced me though, I think it was the stinging remark that Uncle Will made when he saw my bloated face that night. "Well, I guess I really can call you a fat head now."

So, you may ask, do you always wear your veil now?

"I do."