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.