really loud.”
“Are they loose?”
“Not exactly. But the box isn't secure and they could sting somebody. Get over here right away!”
Going Postal
I was mystified, but I grabbed my gloves and veil on the way out, just in case. Not that I really knew what I'd do if there were a problem. As instructed, I pulled around to the loading dock and explained why I was there. Looking relieved, the sole worker back there went inside and came out wearing gloves and gingerly holding the outer edges of a small wooden box. It was buzzing. The two largest sides were covered with screen and I could see a mass of bees inside hanging in a large mass. I noted that the screens were doubled in a way that the bees' stingers wouldn't reach, even if he were holding the box from the sides. I relaxed a bit.
The book laid out the steps for what to do from here. I had memorized them, not wanting to be paging through it later, covered by bees in my “sting-resistant” gloves. The next step was to put them into a cool, dark place until just before twilight. When I got to school I put them in a closet where the bees could rest, except during every class break when curious kids came in to sneak peeks at the buzzing, slowly writhing, mass.
I was excited. I was scared witless. I tried to imagine the next steps: gently reaching into the center of the mass and extracting the queen cage, a small screened box, removing the cork on one end, hanging it from one of the frames inside the hive, and then shaking and banging the box until all the bees had fallen into the hive. Put on the lid, put some grass in front of the hive opening, and walk away.
At the appointed time, I put on my gloves and veil and carried the box in both hands at arm's length up to the platform where the hive was already waiting. I was followed by a small group of curious friends and faculty members. They huddled some distance away as I went through the checklist of the next steps. (“Don't forget the cork!”)
With that kind of sitcom-like setup, you'd expect that everything would go disastrously wrong. Sorry to disappoint: As the sun went down, I followed the directions. Things went like clockwork. I remembered to remove the cork. I opened the box and the bees didn't fly away or sting me silly. I shook and jostled them into the hive and they spread over the frames, seemingly relieved to be home among beeswax again. I closed the lid, placed the dried grass in front of the entrance, and felt competent and brave and alive, like I was somehow home again as well.
Ignorance Can Kill
The next day, things were fine. It was a warm, sunny day, and when I went up to the bee platform at lunchtime with some students, the bees were flying experimental flights out of the hive. Things looked good.
My sense of competence was short-lived, however, and I felt terrible about what happened next. My book-learned beekeeping somehow failed me, or maybe I didn't read far enough into the guidebook.
Not long after, the weather turned cool and wet again. One of my students hurried down from observing the bees to report that they were acting weird, climbing out of the hive and walking listlessly around on the deck. He reported that some seemed to be dead or dying. I climbed up to the platform and looked on helplessly for a few minutes, trying to understand. I began desperately paging through the disease sections of my reference books, wondering whether this was a sign of something like foul brood or deformed wing virus, or whether they'd been poisoned by the bee-unfriendly buck-eye trees nearby.
I opened the box and
the bees didn't fly
away or sting me silly.
I closed the lid, placed
the dried grass in
front of the entrance,
and felt competent
and brave and
alive . . .
It took a while, but I finally realized that they were starving. They were starting a colony from scratch and needed a lot of food to build the comb. The book recommended something I had skipped over: that they should be fed until they get established. They prefer honey, but can live on sugar water. When the cold wet snap hit, they were mostly housebound at a time when there was nothing in the cupboards.
Chastened, feeling like a helpless incompetent who shouldn't be allowed to supervise bees, or even school kids, I had to get back to class, so I put a few of my students to work.
Happy to miss a few minutes of their class for a worthy (or frankly, for any) cause, they mixed up some sugar water, one part hot water to one part sugar. We poured it into a feeder (basically an upside-down mason jar with nail holes pounded into its lid), and took it up to them. Even before we attached it to their hive, the bees smelled the sugar and began streaming excitedly to the jar. Most recovered from their lethargic stupor. Within a day, they had emptied the pint jar and were asking, “Please sir, may we have more?” We continued providing the sweet stuff until the weather cleared up for a long stretch and they began turning up their noses at it.
Still No Observation Hive
I'd like to be able to report that my new beehive quickly became a healthy, fully functioning hive that allowed me to finally do what I'd originally intended to do—set up an observation hive—but it turns out that it doesn't work that way. The bees had a lot of work to do before they'd even have a viable hive, much less be able to donate precious comb and bees to a new hive. It would be days, maybe weeks, before they'd build some of the comb deep enough for the queen to begin laying eggs. Those newly laid eggs would take another twenty-one days before they'd emerge as adult bees. During honey season, a bee may live only forty-two days, which means that a large percentage of the mail-order bees would be dead before the first batch of new bees would replace them.
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