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..."