Buzzy, Buzzy Tuesday

Our bees swarmed today.

I knew they were getting crowded in their hive. I’d done my best to get out ahead of those ingenious, tenacious little insects—researched how to split a hive, researched swarm patterns, attended a beekeeping workshop. I ordered a new hive box so I could split the buggers into two hives. I intended to be really systematic this time around. There would be glue in the joints. The box would be painted in an attractive camo pattern. I would create a hive stand of cinder blocks and two by sixes.

Fed Ex delivered the hive pieces to my doorstep yesterday, but I left it all in the box, unassembled, thinking I would assemble it later, maybe this weekend. I felt good. Things were finally progressing so I could prevent a swarm.

And today they swarmed.

It’s amazing how quickly a day can go topsy-turvy. Usually it’s my kids driving me crazy, but sometimes things just go crazy all on their own. It was 1:30 p.m. I had just called my oldest in from recess to work on spelling. She came running, breathless and excited.

“Mommy, the bees are so busy today! You have to come and see. I’ve never seen them so busy!” she panted.

Sure, I thought. It’s sunny. The bees are busy. No biggie.

But I humored her and walked outside…into a tornado.                   

The tornado of living, buzzing bees was a swirling mass spanning the back fence between our property and our neighbors’. Yards across, it was dozens of feet high. It was breathtaking, awe-inspiring, and terrifying. Already I could see a bivouac forming on a branch in our neighbors’ yard.

Our neighbors who are really cool, but one of whom is deathly afraid of bees.

I panicked. All my plans, all my thought processes, shut down. I knew I first had to alert my neighbor to what was happening in their front yard. Fortunately, the non-bee-phobic neighbor was home. I had time.

I couldn’t find the nails. No. Nails. Anywhere. Despite the fact that I knew for a fact I had bought them. So I herded the kiddos to the car and tore for the lumber yard. I needed cinder blocks anyway.

On the way, I prayed that God would overlook my lack of experience and abject stupidity and help me retrieve the hive before they left their temporary bivouac and made a new home in some nice person’s attic. In an act of Divine intervention and blessing, God led me right to the person I needed.

I was scanning the nails frantically, trying to remember what size I needed, when an employee saw and took pity. He showed me the size I thought I needed and I shook my head. My memory was faulty. It looked too big.

“What do you need it for?” he asked.

“A hive,” I responded sheepishly.

“Oh, congratulations!” he responded. “These here are the right size for a hive. They’re only going into a one-by, so they don’t need to be that big.”

“You know about hives?” I gasped.

“Yeah, and I was going to ask if you have all the pieces you need. I have some pieces lying around back at the house.”

He knew about hives. He knew about bees. And, as it turned out, he had helped retrieve a swarm. He said it was one of the coolest things he’d ever seen.

My heart rate, which had been racing like a jack hammer since first seeing the tornado of bees, slowly calmed. I can do this, I thought. He assured me I could. I drove home with nails and four cinder blocks.

Despite being a bit calmer, I still worked frantically. Never has a hive body been assembled so quickly. Square the edge. Bang, bang, bang! Square the next edge. Bang, bang, bang! No glue in the joints. No pretty paint. No paint at all. Just four wood walls and lots of nails. And still the difficult, painstaking, hot, meticulous work was ahead of me.

Hive body in hand, I went to the neighbors’ yard. The branch the bees had chosen for their bivouac had broken under the weight of tens of thousands of bees, and they had fallen to the ground beside the fence. As I watched, they were streaming toward the fence and the gaps between the planks. Hopes of shaking a branch full of bees into my box vanished. I would be scraping and scooping bees, a handful at a time. I had to be thorough, because I needed to get the queen. I had to be gentle, because I didn't want to crush her. And that’s what I did, with a hand trowel when I could, and with my gloved hand when the trowel didn’t provide the right angle. The sensation when I used my hand was strange, not unpleasant, an intense vibration that drove right through my muscle to my bones. I hated using my hand, though, because they could sting my glove where they couldn’t sting the shovel, and many bees died that way.

The branch couldn't hold the weight of the swarm, and it landed on the ground.

I dumped the bees into their new home a handful at a time.

Three hours later I had collected all but a few stragglers. Since I didn’t see the queen in the stragglers, I could only pray she was in my new hive box. They seemed to be taking to it well—free rent, after all—so I capped it and left it until evening, when my husband would be home from work, the bees would be settled, and we could move the box to it’s new spot atop two cinder blocks. That worked as planned, except for the violent thunderstorm that lit up the sky and drenched my husband and I as we moved the box. By 7 p.m. we had them settled. Tomorrow we’ll see if they stay in their new home.

No frills, but plenty of fuss, accompanied the hive on the left to its new home today--complete with a thunderstorm and gale-force winds as we prepared to move the box.

“Well,” I told my husband, “Bees keep life interesting.”

“They sure do,” he said.