Think Like a Bee

This week I want to talk about bee craziness. Last night I was up at 3am, my mind revved up on anxiety, trying to sort out my bee problems.  The hives have moved full gear into swarm season as we are in a huge nectar and pollen flow.  That means they are throwing out swarm cells, also known as queen…

Today I woke up on the proverbial “wrong side of bed”.  It was my Sabbath monday off, but it seemed that I felt out of sorts about everything.  From my cat who offered me her dead sparrow, hoping to delight me,  to my annoyance at a request made at the last minute by my husband, just before he…

This past week I received a call from Jessie. His voice held an urgency as he asked if I were the one who could come remove the bees from his renters tree.  As I assessed the call over the phone, I realized that this was going to be something waaaay over my head.  It would involve…

These days tens of thousands of small time hobbyists and backyard beekeepers have popped up worldwide. The alarm has been sounded about the dire plight of bees and people are learning about the fascinating secret life of bees and implications for our food system if our free pollinating service goes away.  You’ll see people in funny suits…

Sounds like a headline from The New York Times…except that drone warfare is usually a bit more covert and less advertised in the human world.  In the bee world, drones have nothing whatsoever to do with warfare. They are not harbingers of death and destruction.   They are a far cry from being warriors.  They are gentle, bumbling and…

I opened my new hive this afternoon with fear and trembling.  The one where the bee massacre happened. It was a mess inside.  Soft fluffy piles of newsprint were strewn across the hive floor.  The back of the hive was piled high with shredded paper and roly poly white worms. Outside the hive door was a little pile…

Sometimes learning what to do means suffering through what not to do. After ascertaining that my hive was queen-less, I began the search for a queen.  After my first cold call, DJ, a fellow beekeeper, kindly offered me a queen-less swarm which seemed to be thriving.  He is one of the bee whisperers in town. He…

Queens have many statuses and meanings in our society.  Royal blood to be preserved. Anachronistic relics from the past. crowns of state. Powerful.  Powerless. Dignified beauties. High maintenance girls. Gender at play. In the hive, queens are the mules.  They carry all the genetic material for the next generation.  Her sole function is as the…

I begin my day with Tai Chi in a wild haze of bees.  My golden girls.  Sun lovers. Their little energizer bodies are built like solar collectors.  Sunlight and heat will immediately set them in motion. I too am a sun worshipper.  When the mornings begin to warm up, I am eager to start my…