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.
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