Snow Bees

You may remember the story I wrote last fall about losing my three colonies of bees in September, following the massive storm that swept much of the region. While these precious insects made it through that terrifying day, a strong north wind less than a week later with blowing mist changed everything for them.
The greatest likelihood is that some chemical—agricultural or from the DNR spraying exfoliant in the National Forest for the elk program—blew through the farm. The wind was so strong that we had to tie down the chicken tractors. With that kind of force, harmful sprays could have been carried for miles, easily. Honeybees are one of the litmus indicators of an environment, and the diagnosis after that day was dire.

The entrances of the hives were completely jammed shut with dead bees—piles of them. Two of the three were dead completely, while the third had one small nucleus of live bees surrounding the queen. Cold weather was coming, so I cleaned up the hives from the carnage as best I could and brought the one surviving colony into the aquaponics greenhouse, hoping they could be saved over the winter.

But as the days progressed, despite dripping honey in with a spoon for them to eat and keeping them a comfortable temperature, one-by-one the disoriented and sickened bees crawled out of the hive, unable to fly, and walked across the greenhouse floor in a daze like survivors of a terrorist attack. In the end, they too succumbed, and the farm wintered over without any honeybees to tend. No treks out to the hives to poke sticks into the entrance to keep them open, no watching the wrapped stacks turn into fluffy layer cakes by the snow. That piece of the barnyard looked eerily empty, with just a fence and empty palettes.

So this spring, I made sure to get onto the Northern District Honey Producer’s list for ordering package bees. Two this year—that would be enough—especially since I was going through my hive bodies and frames and culling out anything that was aging, darkened (from years of bee use), or packed with dead bees from the fall. It was going to be a good year for a fresh start, in hopes that whatever had been last year’s demise wouldn’t be passed onto the new colonies.

So, my name was on the list, the check had been sent (goodness, bees get more and more expensive every year, $95 each for 2 lb. packages!), and was told the expected arrival date at the community pickup location would be April 20th. That’s a Monday, good, there’d be plenty of time on a day off from the shop to hive up the bees.

But shipping honeybees is a fickle business. Usually coming from Texas, Georgia, or California (where there are strong queen breeding apiaries), weather conditions and bee availability can push a date around a bit. Some years, we hived on Mother’s Day, other years much earlier. If your bees come too early, they have to make it through cold weather and a long wait for the first honey flow (dandelions). If they come too late, they’re behind the game with lots of catch-up work to do.

It was Saturday—sunny, lovely—and I had been painting the picnic set and working in the gardens in front of Farmstead Creamery while the rest of the crew was out moving gravel and cleaning up a shed, when I decided to check my email. There was a note from the association reading “The bees will be coming in the afternoon, with pickup between 4 and 6 pm, April 18th.”

Whoa, wait, today? I looked at the clock, which read 4:00 pm already. Dashing over to the two-way radio unit, I paged the crew with, “Ladies, we’ve got a problem.” The bee pickup was in Mason, over an hour away. And all that hive organizing and sorting? Well, that had been in my head so far, I hadn’t actually gotten around to doing it yet!

Mom volunteered to hope in the car, while Kara minded the shop and I headed off to our walkout basement where the hive parts had been stored. Pulling out all the hive bodies and supers built over the years, I spread out the frames to make the best picks. Scraping off crunchy propolis used by the bees to cement the hive parts together or bits of burr comb, I busily patched together enough material for two hives.

Assembled out in the bee yard, the layers work like this: two wood shims on the wooden palette to help tip the hive slightly forward to allow draining of any water that might get into the hive, a bottom board with entrance reducer (helps keeps the bees warmer for a while and makes it easier to guard against attack), a hive body with ten frames with fully pulled wax for the queen to lay her eggs, four chunks of pollen patties laid over the frames at the corners (food for the baby bees before wild pollens are available), an inner cover held down with bricks, a jar of sugar water with little holes poked in the lid as a feeder before the first nectar flow, and an outer cover at the ready.

But while I was busy getting the hive all in readiness, it was mayhem at the bee package pickup. While one fellow was helping Mom check that the queen was alive (remember the fiasco last spring?), the sugar can fell into the bee box, breaking the screen, and they all started piling out, very mad! Mom got stung in the face, eventually a different package was found for her to take, and she made the painful trip home with the colonies in a box in the car with a few wayward workers flying about in the cab. Ouch!

At the farm, I was suited up ready to go with our apprentice Jedd (a honey lover eager to learn about bee management). Daylight was fast disappearing, and with cold weather on the way, it was important to get the ladies hived up quickly. We pulled off the lid of the hive, exposing the tops of the frames, then pried the sugar can out of the first bee package. Teasing out the queen cage, I had to carefully swap the cork with a mini marshmallow (without pinching her foot or head in the process), then set her cage inside for the bees to chew her free.

Then came the dramatic part. Steve had stopped over after visiting his cabin, and he and Mom were watching the festivities outside the bee yard. “And this is where it’s best if we step further away,” Mom advised, holding her sore and swollen jaw. “They’re going to shake the bees.”

Holding the shipping box over the hive in one hand, I began slapping it to knock the bees loose and into the hive, then changed hands and repeated the other way. It would be much easier to break the bee box apart and brush them into the hive, but these boxes need to be returned to the association. As the bees rolled and tumbled into a pile over the hive, they could smell the queen, the wax, and the pollen, and began working their way down into the spaces between the frames—the first steps in making this new place their home.

It was just barely light enough to see what we were doing when we finished up the second hive, placed the sugar water feeders on top, and the bees were tucked away for a hopefully promising season for them. That night, rain pattered on the roof, and by the next day there was snow.

This morning, I traipsed out to the hives to take a peak. Normally, on the third day I’d open the hive and take out the queen cage, but with the north wind and blowing snow, it’s best to leave them be to retain their precious heat. But I did shift the sugar water jar just enough to see little eager honeybee faces peering up at me, and I took a stick to the entrances to scrape away the snow and ice.

Tucked in their little, snowy hives, our new bees are dreaming of warm, sunny spring days. It will be good to hear their buzzing again and see their meandering trek across the sky and gardens, forests and fields. In the end, it’s good that they came early, because Monday’s weather was ill fit for hiving bees. There’s always something on the farm that needs a quick change in plans to respond. Our bees are here, which means another step towards the certainty of springtime! See you down on the farm sometime.