Tom's Bee-Loved Honey

My mom’s humor column, from the Walter T. Kelley Company‘s monthly (0r so) newsletter. This one is from August.

By Charlotte Hubbard

On a clear, breezy, great-day-to-be-a-bee summer Saturday, I decided to say hi to my 10 backyard hives. Wandering toward the garden, I heard a lot of buzzing.

The buzzing increased greatly. I surveyed the hives; there wasn’t enough activity to justify it. Following the sound to a nearby maple tree, my heart dropped. A swarm was just settling in the top of it.

I exaggerate. The swaying cluster of bees was “only” 40 feet up the 60 foot tree. It might as well have been on the moon. No!!! NO SWARMING! These were all first year hives. Hadn’t they read that they usually don’t usually do that?

And doggone it, it was July. What’s that old expression? Swarm in May, worth a load of hay; June, silver spoon; July, not worth a fly? Painful sigh? Poke a stick in the beekeeper’s eye?

I have ladders, ropes, and no fear of heights. With the kids all out of the nest, my only dependents are a high-maintenance dog and a rotund cat who never leaves the couch. If the worst happened as I attempted to retrieve the traitors, there’d be enough money left to get the dog some therapy and hire a forklift to move the cat to my daughter’s house. What was stopping me fr om risking life and limb?

Upon further examination, a lot. The hive was quite high, near the end of a slender limb … with no other nearby limbs.

When my husband passed away, several neighbors said “if you ever need anything, just call.” So I did. Dr. Pete arrived first, much to my relief. Dr. Pete isn’t a medical doctor—which would be handy if I’d tried to climb the tree—he has an engineering PhD. Maybe, with ladders and pulleys and ropes, he could figure out a way to get my humming escapees gently to the ground.

Soon neighbor Paul arrived, lured by the opportunity to use his chainsaw. Paul and Pete conferred; I fumed. Didn’t those bees know their chances of making it out in the big world were not that great? Why wouldn’t they listen to me, the real queen bee, and swarm into my spare hive? Didn’t they know I had things to do other than stare at the sky and wonder what I did wrong?!

More neighbors swarmed into my backyard, bringing dogs, little kids, and unbridled curiosity. If staring at the bees would’ve brought them down, I’d have a new hive.

After sketching out a few force diagrams, Dr. Pete concluded there was no safe way to retrieve the ingrates. We saluted his efforts, and everyone went home for the night. Except, of course, the bees, who continued to look down upon me.

When something goes awry, my first call is usually to neighbor Wayne, who wasn’t home that Saturday night. When he returned my call Sunday morning I explained the situation, adding that the cooler heads of the neighborhood had suggested I leave the swarm, well, bee.

The gauntlet was thrown. Within the hour Wayne was in my backyard with saws, ropes, and an attitude. We removed all limbs below the still sleepy swarm, set up a spare hive on a bed sheet below, and talked through the plan one more time before the final cut. Unfortunately, during the discussion, the clump of bees began to disperse. Within seconds they were a cloud. Within a minute, a serpentine swirl out over the lake.

The next day I shared my tale of woe with the wonderful phone-answering beeks at Kelley’s. They suggested a few things I may have done wrong. (Those, and other swarm issues, will be discussed in this newsletter next spring.) They happily took my order for a swarm catcher so perhaps next time I can lure my winged buddies into a spare hive. And they saluted me. Not only do swarming bees typically mean a strong colony, but my loss is a gain for bee biological diversity in southwest Michigan.

Because a swarm mentally stings, I decided to cheer myself up with shopping. Perhaps the lawn flag I found will prevent future swarming…

Today Becca went out to check on the bees, and we were in luck! We had added second and third honey supers to a few of our hives before we went to Atlanta, so we were pretty sure we’d be in for something good when we got home. Unfortunately, it was cloudy and very, very windy yesterday. That type of weather makes bees grumpy, aggressive, and generally very unpleasant to steal honey from. So we put it off a day.

Great decision! Today was perfect… a high of 78 degrees, a light breeze, and mostly sunny (at least, when Becca was out collecting). One of our hives offered up four frames, another gave us one, a third gave us ten! And that hive should be ready to harvest within the next two weeks! So that’s promising. We’e been waiting on a few slackers who have lots of comb but haven’t capped it yet. If you walk by the house, make sure you tell them politely to get to work.

We brought our frames inside, uncapped the comb, spun it in our honey centrifuge thinger-majigger, and put it into bottles. We had a lot of people put honey on reserve*, and we sell a lot of it at Corey Lake Orchards, so what you see in our online store is nowhere representative of what we harvested today (a total of 47 pounds! Or, 21.4 kg for those of you in the land of metric).

So feel free to shop – there’s more than honey available online – and get in touch with us if you need more than what’s online. Maybe we can help you out.

Hooray!

*A service we provide to the many magical friends, family members, and neighbors who have helped us out in our moments of need. Thank you all so much.

If you’re like TBH Beekeeper Becca Sonday, you can’t wait for the 2010 honey harvest to begin. So, you’ll be happy to know that Becca’s been checking the hives for you – not too frequently, mind you, lest the bees be deterred from production – and things are looking great! Rows and rows of golden comb in a few of the hives, when we at TBH weren’t sure if we’d get anything out of our first years.

Unfortunately, with the recent humidity, it’s been a bit difficult for the bees to cap the comb off. They won’t cover it unless it’s just the right consistency, and it is this diligent patience that gives our honey its amazing quality and prevents it from ever spoiling. So we have to be patient too. The golden goodness we’ve all been waiting for is there. It’s just curing. So bee patient yet! We’re going to crack open the hives in a week and try and harvest it if we can.

According to most beekeeping literature, we should expect from first year hives “no extra honey, but no swarms either.”

As of July 16th, Tom’s Bee-Loved Hives are well on their way to doling out golden goodness to the local community. Several hives have not one but two honey supers being filled (though some hives still aren’t producing enough honey even for themselves, per the rule).

Unfortunately, as of July 16th, we’ve also had two, possibly three swarms! We aren’t entirely sure what our first year bees are thinking, but maybe they’re just old at heart…

One of our many July 2010 swarms. Yes, those are all bees.