Transferring the swarm, congregating, aftereffects

Late Friday evening I got the swarm trap out of the tree and carried it to the hive area. My thought was that I would wait until all the bees were in the trap, so I did not lose any of the bees from the swarm. At night, the bees all come home and stay there until the next morning. So, when the activity died down at the entrance to the hive, I sealed the opening with a special disc I placed at the opening and got the trap out of the tree. It was not as difficult as I had thought it might be, thank the Lord. No problems so far.

I opened the hive I had in place to prepare to swap out the frames from the trap to the hive and took the top off the trap. That’s when the entire operation turned into a train wreck. I was instantly surrounded by the entire swarm of bees. Not really. But it certainly seemed that way. To say they were not happy is a gross understatement. I was in a hood and jacket bee suit and quickly discovered that the pants I had on did not protect me from the bees that quickly began to sting my legs. I could not endure the stinging, so I backed away from the trap and got most of the bees off me as I headed to the house. Once in the house I got on the full bee suit and headed back to the mess I had created.

It was not as simple as swapping out the frames from one box to the other. The bees in the trap had drawn down their new comb from the bottom of the frames instead of drawing out their comb on the frames I had provided. I could not put the frames into the new hive with the comb on the bottom of the frame. So I had to scrape the comb off the frame to make the transfer. All the while I was getting stung repeatedly. I finally got all the frames in place. I closed up the hive and left the trap propped up at the front of the hive. At that point the majority of the bees were in the hive. Unfortunately, by the time I got the hive closed up several bees had found a path into the hood of my suit and I got stung multiple times on my face. Most of the other stings were on my wrists at the joint where the gloves and the sleeve of the glove are sewn together. I don’t know how many times I was stung there, but I kept at the transfer until it was complete. Or so I thought. I was greeted the next morning with the entire swarm once again on the outside of the hive. At that point I called for help.

James, who we have frequently called, was not available, but he sent his wife Sherry. Sherry assessed the situation and spent the next two hours calmly scraping the bees off the pallet, the cinder block and the front of the hive and placing them in the hive. We robbed a frame of brood from one of the hives in our small apiary and placed it in the new hive to encourage the queen bee to stay in the new hive by giving her a place to begin laying her eggs. Since I had scraped off all the comb they had built for that purpose when I tried to make the transfer the night before, it would give her a place to start. At the end of all that work, we had to wait and see if we had convinced the bees to stay in the hive. I was wearing a suit she had brought with her for those two hours. A much nicer one that I have. It is what Mama and I need but they are out of our price range at the moment. In that suit there was not even the possibility of getting stung. I spent some time Saturday evening gathering up all the stuff we left lying about when we were working on the hive. Trying to not disturb the bees in the new hive.

Sunday morning, I checked the hive and found that the bees were adopting the hive as their home. Now I need to build feeders for the hives so we can get the bees through this time when the flowers are not available to them. I will get the materials today and get that done as soon as possible. I still have to place the block under the corner of the pallet holding the hives (we took it out so we could get the bees out of it) and redo all the tiedown straps. Other than that, I will not mess with the hives until I the syrup feeders are built and ready to place in the hives. Hopefully, Tuesday.

Sunday we were able to meet together as a congregation. It was nice to see a lot of our members back in their places – sort of. We roped off every other pew and had people sit at the very ends of the available pews so we could maintain social distancing. We still broadcast the service live to those who either could not come or did not feel comfortable coming. This will be over soon but the effects of the fear it has caused will linger for a long time after we decide to get back to our lives. The service was a little awkward. Almost like we typically do, but not quite there yet as our Pastor adapts to the online part of the service.

I have keep reminding myself that I need to have grace for those who are truly afraid. The Bible tells us to defer to the weaker brother in times like this. I hope I did that yesterday, because some people are still afraid. Time heals all wounds, but this “crisis” has me a little worried about how long it may affect us socially.

Thankfully, God is fully in control!