New beeginnings*

Things are getting nerdier around here. We're beekeepers now.

Mike's family started beekeeping last summer with great success, and their bees multiplied enough that they were able to divide their hive into three or four hives this spring, one of which they gifted to us. I have no idea how one actually separates one or two thousand bees from the colony and sets them up in a new hive, since my in-laws were kind enough to handle that part for us. On Sunday evening at the Horns' place, all that remained to do was to wait until after dark to seal up the hive box with duct tape and take it with us.

It was past midnight by the time we got home, and the bees had been bounced around in the bed of our truck for a good hour or more, which I don't imagine they liked very much. We put the sealed hive box in its permanent site out in the garden. Then in one of his more dramatic scenes to date, Mike suited up in protective gear, went back out to the hive in the dark -- in an approaching storm, no less -- ripped the duct tape off all the openings of the hive, and sprinted back to the house. Parker had given the comforting warning, "You can't outrun them," so really Mike's only hope was that he could high-tail it out of there before the bees figured out that they now had a target for their irritation. Seeing no reason for two of us to do a job that one could handle, I stayed at the house and crossed my fingers that he wouldn't get stung. (It worked.)

After letting the bees chill out and get used to their new home for a day, we added a second hive box to the setup. Each box is filled with ten frames that the bees build the honeycomb onto and then fill with honey and eggs. I forgot to take a picture of the open hive box, but you can see what frames look like in the picture below.

Placing another hive box on top of the original box means taking off the lid, exposing the many, many bees within, and this time two people would make the job go quicker. To keep them calm, we gave the hive a few puffs from a smoker filled with burning pine needles. The smoke supposedly interferes with their communication and makes them think the hive is on fire, which prompts them to concentrate on eating as much honey as possible before fleeing. Meaning they're too busy eating to care that we're opening up the hive and poking around. (When the smoke fades, the bees put the honey back and go about their day.)

But even after using smoke, there were still a couple dozen bees swarming around us, so I was pretty nervous about taking off the lid. I haven't been stung by a bee in more than a decade, but I still remember how much it hurt. And as you can see in the pictures, we don't have full beekeeper suits, just items that protect our most sensitive/vulnerable parts, which doesn't exactly make me feel confident. In my nervousness, I was in too much of a hurry to take any pictures with the lid of the hive off, so that will have to wait until I'm more comfortable with the routine. But just as we hoped, the bees didn't pay much attention to us, and we pulled off our task without a hitch.

These two boxes, called the hive bodies, are basically the bees' central home. The queen will lay eggs in there, and we'll always leave the honey in them alone so the bees have plenty to eat in winter. Later this spring or summer, we'll add one or two more boxes called supers to the top of the setup. The queen can't get into the supers (she's too big), so they won't get eggs laid in them, and we'll harvest all the honey from them once or possibly twice a year. But we don't need to add supers yet, because the bees have to fill all the space in the hive bodies before they'll be ready to move upward to new space.

And with that, I may have shared 95% of my current beekeeping knowledge. We're learning as we go. From what I've read, beekeeping can be a very complex business, but I'm hoping we can keep things as simple as possible. Bee hive + flowers = honey. Repeat annually.

*Of all the topics that lend themselves to awful puns, beekeeping is one of the most painful. I've had the misfortune of hearing literally dozens of groaners from Mike and the male members of his family during the past few months.