I must be, as my mother used to say, a glutton for punishment. Like I don’t have enough to do with 2 part time jobs, 6 dogs, chickens, a soy free egg business, rabbits and a few ornery goats. I decided having honey bees would be a good addition to the homestead. (I like honey in my tea)
Anyway, I went to the “installing bees” introduction at Glorybee in Eugene, OR to see what I needed to do. Of course I have a Warre hive and they demonstrated on the typical Langston box. So, I realized I’d have to kinda fudge it. Also, guess I must have missed it in my reading, but I am supposed to feed the little buggers!! S**T!!! So there were a few days of makeshift feeders as the ones at Glorybee wouldn’t fit in a Warre hive. I installed 3 packages of bees in the hives 2 weeks ago…. shake and shiver. Never handled bees before. Got the bee suit, smoker etc to make sure I don’t die of anaphylactic shock in the back field. Found out the first day, honey bee stings are nothing compare to those G** D**N paper wasps. Annoying but not exactly painful. Good to know. Then I had to check to make sure the queen got out of her little cage. Inspected day 2, still in the cage. Gummy bears clogging the entrance are harder for my bees to eat thru than I imagined. Either that, or I just crammed it in too tight. At any rate, on day 4, I had to remove the plug manually.
Two weeks later and I inspect again and can’t find the Queens in any of the 3 hives. What are the chances, eh? So I call Glorybee for some hand-holding and advice and I was instructed to look again for eggs or larva if I can’t find the Queen. I told the guy, I didn’t mean to be a racist, but they all look alike to me. I could see a drone now and then (just a big bee vs the little workers), but a Queen, nope. If I can’t find any, I probably should re-queen ASAP. Unfortunately, they are all out of Queens and won’t have another shipment til May 4 or thereabouts, too late for my guys… BLAH!!! I ’d have to find another supplier. What made me think I could do this?
So I re-suit, (I feel like an astronaut) get my stuff together and trudge heavy-hearted out to my hives. Now, if you’ve never looked at honeycomb before, the idea of looking for a white egg the size of a grain of rice, standing up in the cell, not lying flat (let’s make it a little tougher to see!) or a white larva curled up in a white comb cell, it sounds daunting to say the least. I pray to the god of honeybees that luck will shine down on me.
Disturbing the hive yet again, I fumble with the heavy gloves and pick up each top bar and smoke away. The bees don’t give a rat’s ass I’m there and refuse to move off the comb so I can see it. So, I brush with my handy-dandy bee brush. Most cells have clear or gold honey in them and are open. Most are still empty. A few capped with white. But, then…. I think I see some!! I think I see some!! Larva, not eggs!! Cool!! I’m all excited and can’t believe my luck. Now I get greedy. I don’t want just one hive with larva, I want ALL of them to have some. I go from “please God, just one hive”, to “if one can do it, so can the other two, d**n it!” I’m so busy inspecting the hive, I don’t notice it’s started to rain. Great, just what the bees need, more moisture in the hive. If these bees don’t die on me, it will be a miracle. I give up on finding the Queen and put everything hastily back together to minimize the damage done with the rain.
The rain stops and I inspect the second hive which has much less comb built and the bees are quieter. No larva. No Queen…. No hope for them. sigh…..
The third hive has quite a bit of comb, good thing ’cause I promptly moved one top bar wrong and the comb let loose down into the hive. What a mess, I’m able to pull the comb out of the hive, put it in front of the entrance and brush the bees, for the most part back in the hive. There is no larva in this comb, thank God. Honeybees are forgiving. They just go back to their activity. I should learn from their focus and lack of blaming that stupid, clumsy beekeeper for destroying so much of their hard work. But again, on the remaining combs, I see larva!!!! WHAAAA HOO!!! , congratulating myself on my very smart, very tolerant bees, I feel like I dodged a bullet. Away from the hive I strip off the bee suit (which feels like getting out of straight jacket) and return to the house for my second cup of coffee and to write this.
Should be the end of the story for now, but as I write this, suspicion and concern replace satisfaction… bees other than the Queen can lay eggs and turn them into larva, but they will develop into infertile adults and the hive will still die off. So how do I know whether it’s a Queen that laid them or another bee? Groan. I can’t go back to look for the Queens again. I just can’t. Guess I’ll see if any local beekeepers have Italian Queens….. if not, it will be the shortest beekeeping experience in history…..
About Linda Medero
