If you are anything like us, we love getting a good deal on useful things – you, too? Yes? Good, then you will understand how we ended up with an accidental extra hive of bees by Fall 2016.
We follow our local beekeeping group on Facebook and Matt saw that someone had posted an ad for FREE hive equipment. A lady had recently moved to a piece of property that formerly had bees kept on it and she had a bunch of the left over supers and equipment because she did not keep bees and the previous owners had abandoned all of the goodies. Matt drove the couple of hours to meet her and found that just because the previous owners had abandoned the hives, the bees themselves had not. When he arrived home I was confused as to why we had two additional hives of bees waiting in his truck with rags stuck in their doors.
Matt placed the hives near the original one from earlier in the year and we started the inspection process. These bees had not been tended in years. One of the hives was extremely weak and the frames and supers were disintegrating. We tried to replace some of the worst frames with new ones, which was successful, albeit very sticky, in one hive, but the other was not salvageable.
When a hive is left to its own devices the bees will build their combs in various forms, usually not in pretty, easy to remove, frames like beekeepers prefer. Since these had not been inspected in so long, many frames and comb ripped apart and honey leaked everywhere. I ended up unexpectedly harvesting what comb and honey I could in pots and pans for extracting while the bees that came with the hive met sweet, sticky deaths as they drowned in their honey.
We were not planning on extracting honey last Fall, so I had to do it by hand – for hours. The resulting honey was very dark and reminiscent of molasses. We fed the hive and it seemed to be doing well throughout the Winter and Spring as it reformed in its new location.
Because we were having success so far, we ordered an additional “nuc” in the Spring of 2017 to have a grand total of three hives. Our original hive had built out into a third super, a medium sized one, that was devoted to honey, and Matt and I harvested it mid-Summer. We were so pleased with the light, flowery honey and things seemed to be going well, until chaos hit.
I was laying on the couch with the pups while Matt mowed one afternoon when I saw him sprinting around our house flailing his arms. He dashed inside, panting and missing a shoe as he exclaimed, “the bees are attacking and they’re attacking the chickens!” I helped scrape stingers off of his ears, hands, ankle, and face as he prepped to put his bee suit on to release our hens from their yard to flee. That free hive from the Fall, which had been checked no more than a week before, had turned extremely aggressive. Although Matt had mowed near the bee yard numerous times before, the vibration of the mower had caused them to attack.
We were devastated.
Not only did Matt have various painful stings and swollen appendages, but we could not locate one of our little red hens who had been stung (we later found her body in high grass in our pasture) and one of our Golden Laced Wyandottes had stingers covering her body, eyes, and in her mouth. (I gave her a high dosage of liquid Benedryl to help her relax, hoping she might pull through, but she died that night.)
Matt sought assistance from a master beekeeper in our beekeeping group who likes working with wild, more aggressive bees. She attempted to take the hive from our property two nights in a row to remove them to a remote location where she has hives, but these bees had likely become Africanized in the course of a few weeks and were so aggressive even she didn’t know what to do with them. (Even with their suits duct taped for extra measures they were still being stung and attacked in the dark.) Knowing that they were a danger to our animals and possibly to ourselves and neighbors, we had to make the hard decision to destroy the hive that night.
A few months later, Matt inspected our remaining two hives. The newest hive from this Spring was doing well. But, a week later we took another hit when he went to check the new hive again, only to find that our bees had swarmed and the hive was full of wax moths and their larva. Gag!
Now, we are back down to our original hive – but, it is going strong after being re-queened. We hope to be able to split it with a new queen in the Spring to have two hives again. As with everything on the homestead, beekeeping has its ups and downs and definite learning curves. We are so lucky to have experienced (and generous) beekeepers nearby to help us when these events happen and the honey and experience of working with the hives is so worth it.
Have you lost a hive? What was your most challenging beekeeping (or other livestock raising) experience? What is the most rewarding part of beekeeping to you?