Absconded Queen

I drove down to Floyd, Virginia on Saturday morning for a workshop on beekeeping with Gunther Hauk. What a fun day it was! I took six pages of notes. At the beginning, Gunther asked us to tell our beekeeping experience. When I said, "I got my bees yesterday!" he said, "You cannot see it, but she is aglow." I felt aglow.

And I listened to Ralph Vaughn Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis on the way home, perhaps the most sublime piece of music ever. I turned up the volume and felt like the top of my head was removed. Ahh, so good. (Do a web search: my internet is too slow today to link directly.)

I returned after dark, and the hives were quiet.

I woke at 6:30am and my first thought was, "The bees are hungry." It rained through the night, and Phil said that the bees hadn't eaten much yesterday. I spent the next hour or so trying to make them food. I was supposed to make a sugar candy with sugar and water cooked to the soft ball stage. Unfortunately, my candy thermometer must be packed, and I was misremembering my candy-making experience, so I cooked the five pounds of nasty white sugar almost to the hard ball stage. What should have been easily formable balls were hard little rocks.

But we needed to get ready for church. Queen Esther's hive was abuzz with purposeful activity, but the Queen of Sheba's hive seemed ominously quiet. I put some sugar candy in their hive and left, hoping for the best.

We talked for a long time after church, and we drove a couple hours out of our way, looking for a John Deere Gator that Phil had seen for sale a few days before. But since he didn't remember quite where the Gator was, the trip took a good long time.

Back home: I found the Queen of Sheba absconded. No bees left in her hive. She wasn't dead—she was out of the queen box, and I sifted the dead bees on the floor of the hive to try to find her.

Our sermon this morning was on Matthew 6:25-34, summarized as "Do not be anxious." Bill said that he usually has a point of testing about whatever he preaches on, to see if he's actually believing what he says. I think this was my first little test.

I had hundreds (thousands) of bees crawling on the outside of Queen Esther's hive; all these lost Queen of Sheba workers, in need of direction, in need of hope. But the Queen Esther bees carefully guarded their home; they only wanted the appropriate phermones.

I remembered Gunther's words of yesterday: "If my bees are too aggressive, I tell them, 'If you do not get nicer, I will have to requeen you.' And nine times out of ten, it works."

So I said, "Queen Esther, there are a lot of bees out here who need a queen to guide them. You should take them in. They will make you stronger; they will work hard for you. Let them come in."

Then I walked away.

The usual thing to do when a hive is queenless is to get a new queen from a local keeper. Each hive grows multiple queens in a year, so a good beekeeper can have some extras. Sadly, it's too early in the season for queens to hatch. And the internet had absolutely no help on queenless new hives.

Bill said this morning, "You do the best you can, and then leave the results to God." That was a helpful reminder today. I called all I could think of. Rachel Bush (whose bees arrive tomorrow) said that she'd learned that you can combine two (normal) hives, just by putting a piece of newspaper between them. By the time the bees eat through the paper, they are used to each other's smell.

I found a few sheets of newspaper and went to the hive, only to find: no more bees crawling and circling. No need for the newspaper.

Which was really just as well: how would i have caught and introduced thousands of bees into a hive? It's one thing to dump them from a container, another thing altogether to catch them in flight.

I checked the trees and didn't see bees swarming anywhere. I hope Queen Esther let them join her. I suppose I have no way to know whether she did or not. Be anxious for nothing. (Or is that, BEE anxious for nothing?)

The apiary's guarantee is that they'll resend once, if the queen is dead on arrival. The queen definitely wasn't dead, but she wasn't thriving. And since the hive was over $100, I will call tomorrow and pray for favor. That's a big financial hit to sustain in a day. Especially when the vigorous hive continues healthy and well. (Thankfully, at least in this case, I'm pretty sure this wasn't a management issue.)

Gracie Lou: not a good update. After a close call last night, the doctor told Dave, "I've never seen such bad lungs in such a young child." Jonelle called tonight as they headed up to a summons from the hospital. Gracie Lou's blood pressure was plummeting.

And so we wait. Without anxiety, trusting in a God who cares for his children. His child Gracie Lou; his children Dave, Jonelle, and Natalia.