Bee Swarm

On June 11th, our beehive swarmed. I went to the garden to water and feed the chickens, as usual on a Saturday, when our neighbor Nema came out of her house and called to me. "Your bees SPLIT yesterday," she said, her eyes bulging. "They were everywhere, 50 feet in the air," she gestured. "Oh," I said, "They must have swarmed." "That's it! They swarmed. I was reading about this last night. The bees will be gentle as they look for a new home. Scouts will be looking around for a new place to go. I'm an expert on bees now!" Then she pointed up into the top branch of one of the plum trees. "There they are!" I looked up, and sure enough, a large swarm of bees hung to the upper branch.

Of course, I had somewhere to go right then, but first I stopped home to call Nora and Alice, a local beekeeper and someone who had helped us before. When I arrived back at the garden at 12:30, a small crowd had gathered to watch Alice, standing on top of a 15 foot ladder, knock the bees into a box. She then took them over to an empty hive box with frames she had brought over months before, and shook them into their new home. Later, I helped Alice as she deconstructed our old hive, pictured above as it looked in late June. The hive had been living in several boxes without frames, so the comb, honey, brood, and bees were in a very "natural" and difficult to manage state--pretty much it looked like chaos in there. Alice patiently cut the comb, put honey comb in a bucket, and reconstructed pieces of comb into empty frames, with rubber bands to hold them in place until the bees could secure them.

We got three bottles of honey from Alice, some of which we enjoyed at the last work day.