Why Queenbee?

When we had 5 active honey bee hives my husband was the Beekeeper, I was the Queenbee and the kids were the Drones.  Loved the fresh honey in unlimited quantities.  I was spoiled.  Didn't love active little stingers in my vicinity,

We were on a 1.3 acre corner of land that had been a parsonage and church in the past.  Although we never saw the church as it was originally, or pictures of it, apparently one had to climb some steps to enter the sanctuary.  There was a basement, unusual in many old country churches.   The previous owner had filled in the basement to ground level, raised the floor of the sanctuary, and raised hogs in the church.  Not a good idea for faithful church followers in the neighborhood.  We had so many people guardedly ask us if we were the ones who made a hog house out of the church.  The original windows were still there, with their pointy tops and there were blinds hanging crookedly over them.  It was hard to get up to that level and we didn't use it.  We did store the camper and other large things in the ground level area.

Ok, on the to bees.  Don's grandfather passed away shortly after we moved to our loved acreage and we inherited his bee keeping equipment, much to Don's delight.  There were the white coveralls, special gloves, veils,  a smoker, supers (the white boxes an observer sees), a huge extractor,  hive tool,  frames,  and foundations. As bees are wont to do, when they got crowded in the hive they set out to establish a new colony.  They raised a new queens and "swarmed".  If we were lucky we could catch on and coax the swarm into a new hive.  Eventually we had 5 active hives. 

Of course part of the deal, when we received this equipment, was that extended family got some of the honey.  OK.

At first hives sat on the south side of the dilapidated garage.  The first and biggest garden was also on the south side of the garage, a few feet beyond and slightly downhill from the hives' openings which are nearly at ground level.  Yep, you got it.  When we worked in the garden we were in the flight pattern of the busy bees.  Honey bees don't do detours for temporary, intersecting humans careless enough to enter their flight line. They determinedly went after humans who got in their way.  On my part there were lots of frantic shrieks, and Superman-fast leaping and hopping over rows of vegetables to escape from determined buzzers.   Lots of naughty words, too.  It may have had something to do with their getting tangled up in my hair.   Don would say, "Just be still and they won't bother you."  But, did the bees know that?  I don't think so, Baby. 

Eventually some hives were moved up hill, on the other side of the house, to stay on the south side of the church/barn.  We kept them on the south sides because they got more warmth in the winter.  You can go up to a hive in the winter, put your ear (not MY ear) up to a hive and hear a buzz. 

One day I wanted to take pictures of Don working the hives and getting out frames to put in the extractor. 

(Explanation of that:  When you see a hive, what you are looking at is a number of white boxes stacked on top of each other. Inside each box are 10 frames, sort of like skinny books, that hang, like hanging folders in a filing cabinet.  Each frame starts out with a thin, wax, honeycomb designed center from which the bees get the start for each honeycomb cell they enlarge to a suitable, to them, depth.  When the cell is filled with honey, they cap it off with a waxy top.  Eventually both sides of the entire frame is full.  Simultaneously,  other frames in the box are also being filled.   When the beekeeper harvests the honey, the frames are pulled up and the end caps are cut off with a sharp knife.  Then we could put as many as four of the frames in the extractor.  The extractor was a large metal can shaped tub on legs.  It was about three feet wide and as high as my neck.  I could peek over into it.  There was a crank to spin the tub and centrifugal force flung the honey to the sides of the extractor, to drip to the bottom.  An opening in the bottom let the honey drip into containers.)  

Back to my story.  So, Don is pulling the frames to extract the honey.  I want to take pictures of the process.  He digs out the spare veil, an extra hat, and rubber bands to close my pant cuffs and wrist areas.  I'm about 20 feet away (That's close in MY book.) taking photos as quickly as I can focus them.  Then there is that dreaded buzz.  A bee in front of my face.  I swat.  NOT SOP (standard operating procedure) when a bee is around.  More to that later.   I swat again and back away.  I swat again and let Don know I'm having an incident.  But, shoot, he is over there with hundreds of the little buzzers and I am concerned about just one?  Finally I realize the bigger problem.   "Don! Don!  He's in here with me!"  Yep, the shyster  had found a way inside the veil and he wasn't happy.  Neither was I.  Scream, scream, prance.   Don to the rescue.  He calmly reaches up to my face and squeezes the veil, with the life threatening villain  sacrificing his innocent life before he left his stinger in me.  Back to taking pictures.

Another time I'm out pouring salt water on the asparagus patch.  We'd heard that salt water solutions kept the weeds down and we found it successful.  Don't ask me how much water to how much salt.  In later years we heard that method of weed control was a no-no.  Oh well, lots of things we used to do are now no-nos.  All of a sudden bees were hitting me all over, ping, ping, ping.  Couldn't even take a deep breath to shriek this time, there were so many.  BUT, not one stopped to make my acquaintance on a more personal level. Don was at the south end of the acreage on the riding lawn mower.  Shrieks wouldn't have worked anyway.  I skittered off toward him and realized the bees didn't follow me.  I could see hundreds of them flying through the yard and off across the corn field.  I ran, waving my arms at Don and when I got his attention I pointed to the sky and even he could see the cloud of bees.  That is what happens when bees swarm and they have found a new home away from home.  A few scouts find a suitable spot and then hundreds of bees accompany the new queen and they set up housekeeping.  

Speaking of no-nos.  Our first son was born when we lived on the acreage.  When we switched to formula it called for corn syrup sweeteners to be added.  Now, I would question that.  Then, I did as was indicated.  Sort of.  We figured honey would be a healthier alternative,  So, we used it instead.  Years later we get the warning...don't give infants honey.  Oh well.

Folks around knew we had bees.  In a small rural community, and both of us being teachers, folks around knew most of our business.  When we visited with people they would remark that they'd seen cars and visitors at our house.  Or they noticed changes like our different used car, the camper we acquired, new plantings, and pulling the well for repairs.  We would get calls top people get bees out of  their buildings, or a swarm out of trees.  We, whoops, not WE.  DON, would try to save the colony and set up new hives at home. That was one way to get more colonies without having to purchase them.  I often went along to watch. One house had so much honey on a hot summer day that it was seeping through and staining the ceiling.  Sometimes we just had to destroy the invaders because there was no way to get to them, like the ones behind a large set of cement steps.  Something has hit the honeybee populations in more recent years and they are harder to keep, now.  We gave our beekeeping equipment to Don's brother, Paul, and he is trying his hand at the hobby.  He now lives where Grandpa lived, so the bee equipment just went back "home."  But I think Paul is losing colonies quite often.

One hot summer day, just a day before workshops started and we had to return to school after the summer vacation that included summer school, we were sitting on the front steps in the shade to cool off and visit.  An over friendly honey bee buzzed at my face and I gave it a good swat.  Somehow I connected!  It went right into Don's face.  And stung him.  His face swelled and there was a huge red splotch high on his cheekbone.  When we drove to school the next morning I looked over to him and wouldn't have recognized him if I didn't know who he was.  I said so.  He wasn't happy.  It is still a bone of contention, 37 years later.  "Just be still and don't swat them," had been his line for a long time and still is.  He took a few more teasing hits at school.

All too soon we changed jobs and left the acreage.  We found a new rural spot for the hives at first and had all five of them in a field outside of town. I don't remember what happened.  Don't think they did well and eventually we were down to one or two hives, and then one, at our home in town.  We had a big back yard that backed into a wooded area so it was fairly safe for them and for the neighbors.  IF you didn't mess with them. 

One day the doorbell rang and some little neighbor girls told me a specific neighbor boy was throwing smoke bombs at our hives.  We had trouble with him the whole time we lived there.  He freed our Irish Setter at least two times, the second time ended in the death of our pet.  He poured his Mom's pickles on our car; denied it.  But his Mom recognized the pickles she'd just canned.  His brother shot at our bug zapper.  ruining it.  He denied that.  But Adam was standing by him on his patio when he did it. We never knew why they were a problem.  Got along fine with the parents and sometimes the boys played with them just fine, visiting back and forth.   So... 

Back to the smoke bombed hive.  Using a smoker is how the beekeeper calms the bees when opening the hive to work with it.  So I knew the smoke bomb wasn't a problem unless he knocked over a hive somehow. 

One time we noticed a branch of our dwarf apple tree was leaning over, nearly to the ground.  Don checked and found a huge swarm of bees loading it down.  We apparently saw them just before they were on their way to their new found home.  He was able to capture the queen and save the colony.

When our youngest was about 18 months old he was out in the yard with Don one hot summer day.  Don had some tools and Adam picked one up and rattled it back and forth in the opening of the hive.  The bees responded as expected and Adam was their target. All Adam was wearing was a diaper, shoes and socks.  So the bees had lots of territory to attack directly.  Don realized what was the problem when he heard and saw Adam.  He grabbed him and headed for the house.  By now there were hundreds of bees responding to the intrusion.  Don realized he needed to head to the front door.  It was locked.  I had my head in the washing machine in the basement, on the other side of the house.  But I heard the bell ring and ring and ring.  I got him in the house quickly and then we looked for Adam's stings.  We heard buzzing in the diaper and a quick squish ended that.  But we continued to hear a buzzing and there was a bee tangled in his little shoe string.  Squish.  Total of four stings.  DON'T pinch a stinger left from a sting.  Scrape it off, right at the entry point so that more poison isn't forced into the victim.  We called the hospital and were told to watch him for adverse reactions and treat as we had already done.  Two days later, he had a fever and we learned he had a secondary infection from the stings.  End of hives in town. 

Did you know they open crypts in pyramids and find honey in sealed containers that is still "good?" It keeps a long time.   Ours isn't quite that old down on the canning shelves in the basement.  If it crystallizes you can gently heat it and use it.  Care for some honey cookies?

Did you know that if a honey bee stings you, his stinger pulls out and he will die?  If you are stung and there are not stingers, it most likely wasn't the innocent honey bee.  If one bee gives you multiple stings it is not a honey bee.  One sting is all they get to give and they sacrifice their life to protect themselves and their colony.