I am about to try beekeeping again.
Last year about this time, I drove to Hattiesburg, MS to pick up a nuc. It was a day of joy and trepidation. The end result, though, was that my bees died.
Since then I have read, thought, asked, contemplated, and just generally worried the problem like a sore tooth. I am not completely satisfied with my answers, but I am going to try again. Some things I will do differently. Some things will stay the same.
One of the things that is different this year is that I am apprenticing myself out a little. Which I did a couple of times this past month. I will write up my experience from this weekend later, but this is what happened with my first trip.
The guy that I am buying the bees from is named Steven Coy, and his place is in Bond, MS, near to my mother-in-law's home in Wiggins. A beautiful Friday morning in late March, I drove down to spend the weekend. Early afternoon, I rolled up and hopped out of the car, bee jacket and veil in hand, ready to get to work.
After a few minutes of pleasantries, we headed out. Mr. Coy and his employees had already put in a 6-hour day at this point, and there was still a lot to do.
We took two flat-bed trucks out to the back of a pasture, where there were about 40 hives stacked up. Some were three-high, some just one. Robert - the employee - explained quickly what was planned for the afternoon:
"Crorey, we are going to be splitting hives, which means we will force the queen into the bottom box, and divide up the brood and honey equally among the boxes on top."
At least, I think that is what Robert meant to say. What he actually said was a lot more like "You get two frames of brood that sometimes you can spread across three frames and you make sure that there is one frame of honey, like this or sometimes two, and then you put two empties and two foundations, and then you move to the next one." (I looked at the frame and asked, "OK, so which one is the brood, again?")
I watched him twice, and couldn't get the numbers right. I don't know whether it was the smoke or the excitement, or the fact that my day had mostly been driving or maybe it was new terms to refer to things I knew. But I was confused, and felt clumsy and stupid.
Later in the weekend, Robert admitted that when he gets in a rhythm, he forgets anything except the numbers - he no longer sees the bees, just two frames, one frame, three, two, one; next. I was a little overwhelmed.
I am still not sure I did it right. But the work was pretty fast and furious. We were splitting hives, requeening hives, grafting queens, inspecting hives, lifting, moving, excluding, doing thousands of tasks all at once. And I loved every minute.
The whole weekend, though, was a fantastic opportunity to work with more bees than I would get a chance to work in a whole year of keeping my own hives (he has ~800 hives, and we worked on about half of them). In the process, I learned a lot about bees. In fact, I have five lessons that I learned.
Lesson #1. Bees are not kindergartners.
Stephen actually used those words, telling me a story of a woman who had come to work with him last year. She taught kindergarten kids, and after watching her carefully lift and place the boxes, moving slowly so as not to hurt any of the bees.
"I had to tell her, 'Those bees are not kindergartners.'"
I suspect he was seeing the same tendency in me. And it is true. Part of the reason I work with minimal protection is because I work slowly and methodically. I try to avoid taking actions that would upset the bees while I am working with them.
His message: get past that.
When you are working a large number of hives, you don't have the time to be careful. He later told me that if he had just one or two hives, he would act very differently. But since he has so much to do, he can't take the time to be careful. The business approach means you have to do the work. As subtext, Steven was also telling me that bees are more resilient than I think, and that the hive can absorb a lot more rough handling than I am used to giving them.
Message received. I worked the rest of the weekend, focusing on the work, rather than preserving bees.
Lesson #2. Bees, like all of us, get crabby at the end of the day.
At one point early on, Steven looked up from the over at me and asked where my pants were. I actually looked down at my jeans to see if I was missing something (and for a brief, terror-stricken moment, reliving a whole bunch of nightmares...). Um, I said, I usually work in jeans.
"You will want something more by the end of the day. After a while of being worked, they can get pretty crabby." He went back to the office and got me a pair of pants to wear. I had not been stung thus far, but they obviously know a LOT more than I do. So I put on the white pants.
We worked the rest of the day without incident. But I found out what he meant when we came back the following day, and we moved the boxes we had just split. The bees were not happy about having been disturbed with the work of splitting, and were still ready to fight. And that was the point at which I learned another important lesson.
Lesson #3. The loop at the end of your jacket sleeve? Important.
At the beginning of day two, I pulled on my jacket, and fitted the glove over the jacket. As I was pulling up the glove, it bunched the sleeve up on my forearm. No big deal. And about a half hour later, I had engaged with a bunch of unhappy, stabby ladies, and they butt-stabbed me on the back of my arm. Through the canvas of the glove, and into my arm.
Ow.
Ow, ow, ow, ow. 8 stings. 10. 20. And the one thing I can't do is pull down the glove to pull up the sleeve, because, well, all the stabby ladies are sayin', if you liked it then you shoulda put a glove on it....
Lesson #4. Mind the gap.
Related to the sleeve issue is the jacket-to-pants issue. A lot of my time working bees was spent squatting. Angry bees will find the smallest space to attack, and they are really good at it. The gap between trousers and bee jacket is the perfect example.
Ow.
Lesson #5. Bees don't read.
I don't learn by asking lots of questions. I think it comes from a fear of sounding ignorant, but I will read like mad, trying to get the answers to my questions. I use my reading as a springboard for asking for details. I'll frame my understanding, get the big picture, and then will try and fill in the gaps of my understanding by asking questions.
But what happens a lot of the time is that my framework for understanding is built almost entirely on book-learning. And after fielding a number of questions that filled in book knowledge, Steven very kindly (and maybe a bit wearily) told me that bees don't read.
"Crorey, the books will tell you that bees will not allow stranger bees into their hive. But when I need to, I just turn the hive around, and it confuses them, and they accept the spare bees without a problem. Bees just don't read the books."
I loved working with the guys at Coy, and I learned a lot. Most of what we worked on was professional beekeeper stuff, rather than stuff I would get to do regularly as a hobbyist. But it put me in direct contact with lots of bees (some with the wrong end facing me) and gave me confidence in handling them.
I can't wait to get started.
The next entry will be about the second visit, and the installation. PICS coming!
Last year about this time, I drove to Hattiesburg, MS to pick up a nuc. It was a day of joy and trepidation. The end result, though, was that my bees died.
Since then I have read, thought, asked, contemplated, and just generally worried the problem like a sore tooth. I am not completely satisfied with my answers, but I am going to try again. Some things I will do differently. Some things will stay the same.
One of the things that is different this year is that I am apprenticing myself out a little. Which I did a couple of times this past month. I will write up my experience from this weekend later, but this is what happened with my first trip.
The guy that I am buying the bees from is named Steven Coy, and his place is in Bond, MS, near to my mother-in-law's home in Wiggins. A beautiful Friday morning in late March, I drove down to spend the weekend. Early afternoon, I rolled up and hopped out of the car, bee jacket and veil in hand, ready to get to work.
After a few minutes of pleasantries, we headed out. Mr. Coy and his employees had already put in a 6-hour day at this point, and there was still a lot to do.
We took two flat-bed trucks out to the back of a pasture, where there were about 40 hives stacked up. Some were three-high, some just one. Robert - the employee - explained quickly what was planned for the afternoon:
"Crorey, we are going to be splitting hives, which means we will force the queen into the bottom box, and divide up the brood and honey equally among the boxes on top."
At least, I think that is what Robert meant to say. What he actually said was a lot more like "You get two frames of brood that sometimes you can spread across three frames and you make sure that there is one frame of honey, like this or sometimes two, and then you put two empties and two foundations, and then you move to the next one." (I looked at the frame and asked, "OK, so which one is the brood, again?")
I watched him twice, and couldn't get the numbers right. I don't know whether it was the smoke or the excitement, or the fact that my day had mostly been driving or maybe it was new terms to refer to things I knew. But I was confused, and felt clumsy and stupid.
Later in the weekend, Robert admitted that when he gets in a rhythm, he forgets anything except the numbers - he no longer sees the bees, just two frames, one frame, three, two, one; next. I was a little overwhelmed.
I am still not sure I did it right. But the work was pretty fast and furious. We were splitting hives, requeening hives, grafting queens, inspecting hives, lifting, moving, excluding, doing thousands of tasks all at once. And I loved every minute.
The whole weekend, though, was a fantastic opportunity to work with more bees than I would get a chance to work in a whole year of keeping my own hives (he has ~800 hives, and we worked on about half of them). In the process, I learned a lot about bees. In fact, I have five lessons that I learned.
Lesson #1. Bees are not kindergartners.
Stephen actually used those words, telling me a story of a woman who had come to work with him last year. She taught kindergarten kids, and after watching her carefully lift and place the boxes, moving slowly so as not to hurt any of the bees.
"I had to tell her, 'Those bees are not kindergartners.'"
I suspect he was seeing the same tendency in me. And it is true. Part of the reason I work with minimal protection is because I work slowly and methodically. I try to avoid taking actions that would upset the bees while I am working with them.
His message: get past that.
When you are working a large number of hives, you don't have the time to be careful. He later told me that if he had just one or two hives, he would act very differently. But since he has so much to do, he can't take the time to be careful. The business approach means you have to do the work. As subtext, Steven was also telling me that bees are more resilient than I think, and that the hive can absorb a lot more rough handling than I am used to giving them.
Message received. I worked the rest of the weekend, focusing on the work, rather than preserving bees.
Lesson #2. Bees, like all of us, get crabby at the end of the day.
At one point early on, Steven looked up from the over at me and asked where my pants were. I actually looked down at my jeans to see if I was missing something (and for a brief, terror-stricken moment, reliving a whole bunch of nightmares...). Um, I said, I usually work in jeans.
"You will want something more by the end of the day. After a while of being worked, they can get pretty crabby." He went back to the office and got me a pair of pants to wear. I had not been stung thus far, but they obviously know a LOT more than I do. So I put on the white pants.
We worked the rest of the day without incident. But I found out what he meant when we came back the following day, and we moved the boxes we had just split. The bees were not happy about having been disturbed with the work of splitting, and were still ready to fight. And that was the point at which I learned another important lesson.
Lesson #3. The loop at the end of your jacket sleeve? Important.
At the beginning of day two, I pulled on my jacket, and fitted the glove over the jacket. As I was pulling up the glove, it bunched the sleeve up on my forearm. No big deal. And about a half hour later, I had engaged with a bunch of unhappy, stabby ladies, and they butt-stabbed me on the back of my arm. Through the canvas of the glove, and into my arm.
Ow.
Ow, ow, ow, ow. 8 stings. 10. 20. And the one thing I can't do is pull down the glove to pull up the sleeve, because, well, all the stabby ladies are sayin', if you liked it then you shoulda put a glove on it....
Lesson #4. Mind the gap.
Related to the sleeve issue is the jacket-to-pants issue. A lot of my time working bees was spent squatting. Angry bees will find the smallest space to attack, and they are really good at it. The gap between trousers and bee jacket is the perfect example.
Ow.
Lesson #5. Bees don't read.
I don't learn by asking lots of questions. I think it comes from a fear of sounding ignorant, but I will read like mad, trying to get the answers to my questions. I use my reading as a springboard for asking for details. I'll frame my understanding, get the big picture, and then will try and fill in the gaps of my understanding by asking questions.
But what happens a lot of the time is that my framework for understanding is built almost entirely on book-learning. And after fielding a number of questions that filled in book knowledge, Steven very kindly (and maybe a bit wearily) told me that bees don't read.
"Crorey, the books will tell you that bees will not allow stranger bees into their hive. But when I need to, I just turn the hive around, and it confuses them, and they accept the spare bees without a problem. Bees just don't read the books."
I loved working with the guys at Coy, and I learned a lot. Most of what we worked on was professional beekeeper stuff, rather than stuff I would get to do regularly as a hobbyist. But it put me in direct contact with lots of bees (some with the wrong end facing me) and gave me confidence in handling them.
I can't wait to get started.
The next entry will be about the second visit, and the installation. PICS coming!
my heart is beating faster just reading your adventure account.. I love you.
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