Swarm!

Bee swarm #1 in my apple tree.

I went to the backdoor to let my beagle Tiny in, and I found him pressed against the door, looking quite unusual. "What's the matter little buddy?" I asked him. I opened the door and he quickly scooted inside and ran straight down the basement stairs to his favorite spot in the tool room. I glanced out toward my backyard and what did I see but a large swarm of bees in the apple tree! That explained everything.

Langstroth hive.

I started keeping bees in the mid-1990s but only for a year or so. The bees flew away, I sold the hive to an eccentric lady at my yard sale (she was going to make it a lawn decoration) and the bee suit to another odd duck. That ended my bee experience until three years ago, when a friend loaned me a Langstroth hive (those old fashioned boxes) and another built me a new top-bar style hive. I was back in business.

My first two colonies didn't make it through the winter, so I order two more packages of bees and they made the trip up from Georgia to their new homes last May. The gals did great, and this spring they still had honey left over in the hives. I was able to harvest a few pints and it was absolutely delicious.

Top Bar Hive.

Bee colonies as a whole reproduce by swarming. It usually happens in the spring, when queen cells are made by the worker bees in the hive. These cells are larger than the rest, and the larvae inside are fed royal jelly which makes them grow into new queens. The reigning queen sends out scout bees to find a good gathering spot, then she takes up to 60% of the bees in the hive with her and leaves home. She will fly to the scout-selected spot and all her followers will cluster around her into a tightly packed blob of bees. This is swarming.  Back in the hive, the first queen to hatch will seek out the remaining queens and kill them, thus ensuring her title to the throne. She will take a mating flight, then return and start laying eggs, building the bee colony back up again. It is nature's magnificent way of reproducing bee colonies.

Most traditional beekeepers manage their bees and try to prevent swarming in a variety of ways. I am a non-traditional beekeeper and I let the bees be bees and do what they do. I provide a home for them rather than raise them for honey production. If they want to share some of the nectar of the Goddesses with me I am good with that. But for me this is all about the bees. I am but a friend.

So on that day I had my first swarm. They clustered on the branch of my MacIntosh apple tree early in the morning, right when I was on my way to a meeting. I rescheduled of course and grabbed the ladder and some pruners and gathered up the Queen and her followers, placing them into a new hive. They stayed, bringing my total number of hives to three.

Temporary bohemian hive. Note cupboard door on top.

A week later, I went out in the backyard and stepped right smack into the middle of swarm number two! It was glorious to be surrounded by a cloud of buzzing bees!  This swarm landed higher up in the tree, so I had to call my Beloved to come and help me as I didn't want to fall off the extension ladder so precariously placed on the small branch.  This cluster went into a very bohemian looking hive that I cobbled together while a new top-bar hive was being constructed. Now I had four hives, my apiary had doubled!

But oh no, they weren't done yet. Two days later a secondary swarm appeared on the apple tree. I did not want to keep this group, as I live in the city and I have no idea what the laws are about keeping bees. I figured no one would complain about a hive or two, but five? That was pushing it I was sure. I put the word out that I had a colony of bees to give away, and received an email from a very nice gentleman who wanted to learn to keep bees. We made arrangements for him to come and get the secondary swarm the next morning.

I gave him a quick one hour lesson in what I knew about beekeeping, and sent him on his way with his very first bees. I couldn't help but remember the day I got my first colony, the fear mixed with the excitement. We talked several times that day as I wanted to check in and be sure he didn't have any troubles putting them in their new home. He had stopped at the beekeeping supply store and purchased his hive tool, bee hat and veil, and a book about beekeeping. I am sure he spent many hours that day just sitting and watching them with fascination and admiration. I loved being able to pass along this wonderful relationship of living with bees.

Just a few months ago I never would have imagined myself walking unprotected into a swarm of honey bees, let alone handling one. The sound of their buzzing wings and the potential pain of being stung filled me with fear and trepidation, a kind of primal warning instinct telling me to stay away. But it was only because I did not know them. They taught me that sometimes fear is simply in our minds, and that by getting to know the object of our fear we might see there really was nothing to be afraid of after all.

Coin of the ancient Ephesus.