The Next Bee Chapter

You’ll notice I didn’t title this post the last bee chapter, ‘cuz I’m sure there will be more to come, although hopefully not until spring.

Friday afternoon when the bees were making more honeycomb, I decided to call the bee man back. He said he’d come on Saturday. And he did, with the top part of his bee suit and some gathering equipment.

Friends decided they had to watch this, so we waited for them to arrive. Of course, while we waited it started raining, making the whole experience more pleasant.

When all were settled in place, the bee man climbed the ladder, scraping the bees and their honeycomb into his bee box. He was surprised that they weren’t as calm as he’d expected with the cool temperature and rain, even after spraying them with sugar water. (That’s supposed to calm them down, the opposite effect it has on people.) In any case, he did get them into the box and got the lid on. He said the bees had already made 4 pieces of honeycomb – here’s a piece of one of them that broke off in the move.

He decided to leave the box on my roof till Sunday to make sure he had definitely gotten the queen, and to get out of the rain.

True to his word, bee man arrived on Sunday. The temps were warmer, plus no rain, so just in case he needed to gather up more bees, he brought along some not-so-high-tech equipment.

He didn’t, so he simply brought the box down from the roof. He opened it and let me see where all the bees were inside. I’m sure you could guess, as I did, that the queen was in the upper left corner of the box.

I learned another amazing bee fact while bee man was here. Bees CAN live outdoors over winter here in western New York, where temperatures are often below freezing for weeks at a time, and in a bad winter below zero for several consecutive days. I never thought that could happen! I assumed the bees on the outside of my house were doomed.

Do you know anything else about bees that you’d like to share?