Tom Sonday

Becca’s graduation, Jess’ engagement and Barack Obama were last week.  This is an update about the bees, for those of you who have asked about what’s going on with my fuzzy little friends.

Last Wednesday 7th-grader Taylor, who used to be afraid of bees, helped me install three hives atop my Dad’s rooftop at Corey Lake Orchards farm market.  If I were a bee, there’s no place I’d rather bee than smack in the middle of a several hundred acre fruit and vegetable farm.

I was so proud of Taylor for overcoming her fear, and bee-coming one with the bees.  It takes a special person to go up on a rooftop with 30,000 stinging insects.  There’s no place to run …

Taylor bravely dumping bees in the U of M hive; go blue!

The bees are there for pollination, making honey, and agrotourism … in that order.  Because of the latter reason though, I couldn’t just put them in boring white hives.  College football loyalties run deep in this area, and last fall, it was interesting to watch which scarfed-in-school-colors honey bears sold the best at Corey Lake Orchards.  (It was Notre Dame.)

Although not quite the right shades as bees like lighter colors, the hives are green for the Spartans, gold for Notre Dame, and blue, for the University of Michigan.

The hives: after bee installation, and bee-fore they've had a chance to calm down and all get inside

Because I’ve written several big checks to U of M over the last several years, I prefer to think of the gold one as actually maize … putting maize and blue together.  It’ll be interesting to see which “school” produces the most honey — updates to come.  (Rumors that I didn’t actually put any bees in the Notre Dame hive are untrue.)

I painted an artistic impression of the Spartan block S on the MSU hive in honor of my sister Beth, manager of Corey Lake Orchards.  If any of you ND fans want to spring for a decal for the ND hive (or the U of M one!) I’ll be happy to decorate it.  Hhhmm, maybe I should sell billboard space on the hives ….

Taylor shows one of her many new friends ...

We’ll check these hives mid next week, to verify that the queens have happily settled in and laying the required 1000-2000 eggs / daily, and that they are predominantly female eggs.  Every once in a while, an improperly fertilized queen comes along, and she lays just drones.  This becomes apparent when you do a hive check, as the honey comb cells, instead of being covered with smooth, similarly sized caps will be covered with irregular, bumpy, larger lids because of the size of the drones.  And, since drones in a hive are absolutely useless except for one minor function (fertilizing some other queen), a hive with only a “drone layer” as queen is headed for certain death as there’s no one to pamper the queen and raise the babies.   Until they eventually starve to death though, that drone-rich hive will be able to answer any sports questions …

In the words of Jane, my bee pimp, “any queen that just produces boys is pointless.”  I liked telling that to bee partner Rose, mother of just four boys. 

We had (had being a key word) a drone layer in one of the hives we installed in my backyard.  I found this when checking those hives last week.  Thus, I ordered a new queen bee, and she arrived yesterday in a tiny cage in an envelope, via the mail (yes, really), along with a few attendants.

As bees are very loyal to their queen (even a useless one), to “requeen” you must find the current queen and smash her against the cage of the new royalty (to expedite their acceptance of her.)  The bees will then happily eat their way toward her (she’s trapped in the cage by a wall of sugar candy.)

There are a few things that really bother bees.  Thunderstorms make them nervous; opening their hive when it is cold, windy and threatening rain makes them quite unhappy; pawing through them to find their queen really sets them off.  Yesterday we had a queen we absolutely needed to get in the hive.  And yesterday, we had all those undesired conditions.

In anticipation of their likely anger, Rose and I lit the bee smoker … about 800 times.  We had combustible materials made specifically for bee smokers, dried leaves and pine needles, pine shavings, 17 feet of crumpled newspaper – and nothing would stay lit or burn.  I’m thinking of using marshmallows as I always manage to light those on fire when I’m around a campfire.

The clouds momentarily parted, and Rose and I frantically worked to get something smoldering in the smoker.

The clouds let go with torrents of rain and earth-trembling booms of thunder (bees can’t hear, it’s the thunder vibrations that bother them).  Rose and I took refuge in my garage.  We wanted to go in the house, but couldn’t, because finally — the smoker was going!

And going and going and going and going.  Billows of smoke rolled out, hanging in the garage, enveloping Rose and myself.

The garage was filled with the pleasant scent of pine needle smoke — meant to be used to calm down the bees.  The bees may have been getting more agitated, but it didn’t matter.  After 30 minutes of sitting in the garage through the steady rain, and inhaling the smoke, Rose and I were quite calm.

A second break in the weather came; Rose and I dashed out and opened the hive.  We searched amongst the thousands of greatly agitated insects for the one who looked a little bit different … so we could kill her for the greater good.

It took longer than we (or they) would’ve liked for us to find her.  It took even longer to get the courage to ”do the deed”, even though it was for the greater good, but we did it, and then introduced the new queen to her subjects.

So … what bee happening?  All those bees are busily gathering pollen, building honeycomb, and raising new worker bees.  Until the next hive check (which the weather may not allow any time soon), we’ll assume they’re busy … as bees.

And meanwhile, Rose and I will practice lighting the smoker.