"I have good news and I have bad news," the postmistress said. It was 8am, and I had been expecting her call. "The good news is that your bees are here, and they are doing well. The bad news is ... none of your ducklings made it."
So Isaiah, Joe and I went to pick up two colonies of humming bees and a box of dead ducklings. The temperature had been predicted to be 39 degrees overnight; it was 29 degrees when I awoke. If the ducklings were loaded last night and left in a delivery truck: it's upsetting to think about. We'll get a replacement shipment next week, and hopefully those 20 beautiful birds will arrive safely.
Phil and I worked quickly to finish assembling the bee frames. Then it was time to put the bees in their new Langstroth hive. (After the fiasco of the top-bar hive last year, I wasn't about to try that again!)
Assembled, one of the two covers didn't quite fit. I had noticed that weeks ago, but brushed it aside, figuring maybe I was wrong in how it was all supposed to fit. Today, I had to face the reality that I really did need a proper sized inner cover. My online order had been a mixed up mixture of two different sized hives. I had ordered a second set of outer covers; now I ordered a second set of inner covers, too. Those two errors added a substantial price to the cost of the hives. And with the bees only lasting about 24 hours last year, I sat down and cried for a while before I could bring myself to install the bees.
So much expense. So much room for error! So much hope and excitement last year, to end in failure. So much deep desire for a land of milk and honey; so much fear for what might come this year.
But that's farming. Chin up and try again. I dried my tears and went to install.
Phil had found a great little movie on how to easily install bees. First, I had to pry the strips of wood that connected the two hives and made carrying them easy for the USPS workers and myself.
Then I removed the queen. In the little movie, a woman asks the teacher if that's easy enough for a beginner. He says, "Sometimes a beginner is nervous and drops the queen cage into the bee box. It's nerve-wracking to stick a hand into a box with 10,000 bees." That hadn't happened to me last year, as a rank beginner, and it hadn't happened now. A few bees started to emerge from the hole made by removing her cage, but her pheromones should be strong enough to keep them around.
I screwed out the little cork on one side of the queen's cage. It covers candy, which the bees will gradually eat through and free the queen. Hopefully she will have acclimated to her new home, and will make the hive orderly and happy.
I lifted out the can of sugar syrup, put the box of bees into the hive (after removing a few frames), and put on the inner cover. Phil punched some extra holes in the sugar syrup and inverted it over the cover. The first hive, Celadon, was installed without a hitch.
The bees soon began to fly in and out.
Isaiah was excited to find a drone bee. These males have no stingers, and are quite tame. Isaiah let him crawl all over his hands before the bee flew away. (I later caught Jadon and Isaiah having a competition to see who could find a drone first. The two little towheads, searching all the bees around the hives, was a cheery sight.)
On to the next hive. I pulled the tab for the queen.
The tab pulled off in my hand. I stared at it stupidly for a moment, wondering how I would get the queen cage out.
And then the queen cage vanished from view, fallen into the box with 10,000 bees.
And the bees immediately began to swarm out the hole.
Despite what the movie said, I was not going to put my hand in. Rather, I removed the sugar syrup can and prepared to shake the swarm into the hive. The queen cage should fall out, too, and allow me to free the queen.
As I picked up the box to dump, I watched in horror as a bee crawled into my sleeve. I remembered then that Melanie had mentioned that her grandma rubber-banded her sleeves down. This bit of brilliance I put into practice as soon as I extricated myself from the bee-infested sweatshirt. After turning it inside out to ensure no cling-ons remained, I banded my sleeve and returned to the hive I had abandoned. It takes guts to keep calm in the face of 20,000 stinging insects.
After dumping a good many of the bees, the queen cage fell out. I picked it up, unscrewed the cork, and rubber-banded it into place.
You can see the large white candy blocking in the queen.
And now the Celestial hive was installed as well.
Last year, I named the bee queens Queen Esther and Queen of Sheba. I learned later that bees are really a unity; they should be named for their hives, not for their queens. Since this is the C year, Celestial seemed appropriate for insects that fly in the heavens. Celadon is a type of green Korean pottery, which I learned about in one of my favorite children's books, A Single Shard. Creation of something beautiful out of something earthy, whether pollen or clay, seemed appropriate.
Walking back up the hill, Isaiah said, "It's good to have bees back again."
I agree.
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