No Sleep When There are Bees to Keep

Instead of writing this weekend, much of my time was spent with family, and most of my energy was spent caring for the hive my wife and I keep. It is interesting and fun to have a bee hive we care for, it can be tiring at times though. That has never been more clear to me than this weekend. The honey we hope to get from our bees will make it all eventually worth it.

We needed to move our hive because a bee from it recently stung a family member that got sent to the hospital because of it. The hive had been on his property for over a year and he’d never had any issues with it, but it only takes one time for things to go wrong. He said he’d been stung many times over the years and never had any reaction to their stings, but he got stung on the inside of the nose and within minutes he was starting to have issues breathing. Scary stuff. He got an epi-pen at the hospital and is fine thankfully, but after that we decided there’s no reason to risk keeping the bees there.

He said he’d been stung many times over the years and never had any reaction to their stings, but he got stung on the inside of the nose and within minutes he was starting to have issues breathing.

The endeavor started in earnest with a trip to two different hardware stores and collecting some tools from my father-in-law. We needed to level out a bit of land where our hive was going to move to. The reason that we needed to level out the ground where the bees were going is because if the ground isn’t decently level then bees can start to build their comb askew. They may start connecting the frames that their comb gets built inside of. Now this isn’t a problem for them, it is mainly a problem for the bee keeper. It means that you will need to destroy comb if you want to inspect the inside of the hive. I always feel a little bad when I have to ruin their hard work, so we spent about an hour leveling out the ground since the hive was on the side of a slopping rise.

Once that had been done, pavers set, two by two, we left and were ready for Operation Bee Relocation. Before they could be moved the next day, at nine o’clock in the evening we had to get back out to the bees at my wife’s uncle’s property. All of the bees were tucked away inside of the hive already. They don’t venture out and work at night once it’s dark. We silently worked around the front of the hive, pinning a small screen around the entrance of the hive so none of the bees could get out while we move them.

All of the bees were tucked away inside of the hive already.

Bees that are assigned to guard duty were ever vigilant because while we were pinning up a mesh screen two guard bees popped their bodies through a whole and did a small patrol of the front of the hive. My wife whispered, “Go back inside please.” and thankfully right after they squeezed back inside of the hive. We patched up any other holes that the bees could get through and left them for the night.

The next morning at five o’clock we got up barely awake and went back to the bees. It was moving day for the bees. My father-in-law and I loaded them up into the back of his van and then we all jumped into our cars. I was following them in my wife’s car and the secret mission was on. Our headlights cut through the morning fog that still sat at the base of the hills around us. Our turns were slow and we attempted to miss any of the pot holes or bumps in the road. It was a twenty minute drive where I always feared a blinker coming on and them jumping out of the van with bees chasing them. I’m very happy to say that didn’t occur.

I was following them in my wife’s car and the secret mission was on.

Moving them went off without a hitch, no bees were able to escape from their hive inside of the van and as far as we know they seem happy at their new location. It is much bigger and has more land to forage. During our drive over to their new location that morning, it could have be the tiredness, but I caught myself laughing alone in the car. While bees are crazy little creatures that nest together, drink nectar from flowers, then age it, and dehydrate it, how crazy are people? The ends that we go to get thickened bee spit, is quite something. We would risk transporting thousands of angry bugs, with poison in there butts, inside of a van with only a thin mesh screen between you and them. But honey is really tasty.