Bee Story Two

I was driving down the highway and Shonna, my daughter-in-law, was driving behind me. She called on the cell and Honnah, my granddaughter, answered. "Did you see that? BEES! In the middle of the road!" A swarm of bees had landed on the yellow line and settled in. A huge swarm of bees. By the time I completed my mission of picking up my other granddaughter, Lucy, from school and Shonna went home to don anti-sting apparel and get a bucket and scoop the bees were gone. Who could blame them, vehicles kept running them over.

The next night Shonna's brother called and said "BEES, I found bees!" Being natural born farm girls, Shonna and Honnah did not hesitate to go out at midnight and capture the swarm off a tree limb. We are assuming it was the swarm from the highway as it was only about a mile away. And, in my heart, I am assuming that they are part of my original two families of bees that flew my hives a few weeks before.

So yesterday my plans did not involve bees, but the farm has a way of doing its own thing. So Gary and I went up on Bee mountain and proceeded to take care of the ornery and stubborn hive.... you know, the ones that attacked us the day before. A group of them had decided to stay in the nuc box instead of going into the hive so my bee counselor told me to turn the nuc upside down and pound it on the ground emptying out the bees. He said don't worry, they'll go into the hive eventually. Keep in mind that these are the same bees who took issue with being moved in the first place. The ones who stung my hands, my dog and my husband's eye. This time we used the smoker and it did mollify them to some extent. So, we managed to get them all out on the ground and they commenced to fly around looking for something to sting. We had the upper hand this time: we purchased two real bee hats with veils...no more tulle for us.

Then we set to work setting up another hive for the wild swarm Shonna had sitting in a bucket in her kitchen. When we finished that we looked in on the ornery hive and they had all congregated on the OUTSIDE of the hive. You can see them in this photo. Hello...GO INSIDE!













Later we installed the wild bee swarm and it was almost anticlimactic. (Second photo)

Now I'm certain they are my original hive because they are so sweet and docile. I shook them off the little branch and off the iris Shonna had given them and they acted like it had been their idea all along to move to this hive.





So, now we have three hives. Stay tuned for continuing bee saga....