#24. BEEKEEPING ANNIVERSARY

It was a just year ago this week that I picked up my two nucleus colonies of bees, and by last summer the two colonies expanded to three when I collected a swarm that had issued from the yellow hive.  So far it's been a tremendous learning experience on many fronts.  I have always thought of myself as an amateur naturalist, having spent many childhood summers thigh-deep in ponds and marshes, emerging covered in leeches and not a bit bothered.  My passion for the natural world continues to this day, but now I feel as though a confluence of events - living in the wilds of Montauk + keeping bees - has given me a keen, new, heightened sense of the natural world around me.

This week I had two newcomers to my garden, and if I hadn't been obsessively watching the hives I would have missed them both.  One day last week, near dusk, while gazing out over the bee yard I caught the movement of what I thought was the neighbor's dog just on the other side of the apiary fence.  Striding purposefully, gracefully, I thought it was odd that he appeared to be heading into the woods.  Then I saw the white tip at the end of his bushy tail and realized that it was not a dog at all, but a red fox; a very large one at that, and he just glided past the back of the hives and headed into a thicket of bramble and wild rose.  The last time I saw a fox at the house was over a year ago, and he was padding across my neighbor's snow-covered lawn in the pink dawn light.  Truly a National Geographic moment.  I wonder if the one I saw the other day was a relative.

Then yesterday an unfamiliar bird flew across my line of sight.  It's funny how one immediately picks out a stranger among the usual backyard denizens.  This brown bird had a long tail and a white underside.  At first I thought it was a small hawk,  but I noticed that none of the other birds had left the feeders, so I knew that it couldn't be a predator.  It flew low across the yard and landed on the wood chips in front of one of the bee hives.  It picked up a bee off the ground - whether a dead one or not I couldn't tell - and, working its beak like a pair of chopsticks, it tossed and rearranged the insect for a long time before it finally ate it.  Obviously the bird was well aware of the stinger issue and it either needed to get the bee in exactly the right position to avoid the venom, or perhaps it chomped and clamped until the stinger was amputated from the bee?  I went to my bird books to identify the attractive creature.  Thrasher came to mind, but they do not have a pure creamy white underside.  I found that it was a black-billed cuckoo.  Imagine, a bird as familiar as the cuckoo, and yet I don't think I've ever seen one.  I probably shouldn't have been so excited.  I know cuckoos are naughty birds, sometimes laying their eggs in another bird's nest for others to rear.  And she was, after all, eating my bees.  But I think I have upwards of 120,000 bees at the moment, so I don't mind sharing a few with the cuckoo.  To my surprise and delight she was back in the apiary this morning.  And she kept me company while I gardened nearby, flying just a few feet away only when Daphne the Norfolk Terrier mindlessly approached and startled both the cuckoo and herself.  This cuckoo is a brazen creature and I hope she spends a lot of time in the garden.  I understand that the their favorite food is caterpillars.  Just the kind of connoisseur a gardener needs!

And speaking of gardening, my friend Andrew brought over all kinds of earthmoving and other heavy equipment and we cleared at least 2000 square feet of scrubland adjacent to the hives for a new vegetable plot.  A daunting project to be sure, but thrilling nonetheless.  V. cool learning how to use these machines.  What we did in a matter of days would have taken me a year to accomplish with hand tools alone.  Then we used the dump truck to bring in 6 tons each of compost and rotted manure and roto-tilled it all in.  

This will increase my vegetable gardening capacity by about fourfold.  We've already planted about 150 feet of mixed heirloom potatoes.  Squashes, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants and the like are still indoors in pots.  The old original 20' x 30' plot is about half-planted now with a variety of crops that don't take up a lot of room, like beets, carrots and radishes.  That's also where the purple asparagus lives, and I've been enjoying that treat for about the last two weeks.  I'll probably be able to pick stalks for another couple of weeks.  So yummy.  Another 12' x 12' plot is overflowing with garlic, onions and leeks, plus a couple of volunteer potatoes from last year that overwintered and are now over 12" high.  I think it's going to be a bumper year.

As for the bees, I finally did my first hive inspection about 10 days ago, and it was dramatic, to say the least.  The purple and red hives looked healthy, prosperous and unremarkable.  I saved the yellow hive for last, knowing that it might be a challenge.  Boy, was I ever right.  They were so savage that they stung my hands multiple times right through my heavy suede pruning gloves.  I actually had to retreat to the garage and put on a pair of nitrile gloves over the heavy work gloves.  That did the trick.  Once I felt secure that I wouldn't be stung, I could relax a bit and try to analyze the mayhem.  Strangely, the light smoking I employed seemed to rile rather than quiet them.  And once I finished taking the hive apart and rearranging things I hung back but stayed in the bee yard to see how long they would harass me.  The pounding of tiny bodies against my bee veil just didn't stop, so I moved to the picnic table about 60 feet away.  They followed me, but here's the amazing thing:  I had the hive smoker sitting on the table, still emitting wisps of smoke, and the bees seemed to be attacking not just me, but the metal smoker can.  Finally, one of them made a suicide assault and threw herself into the inferno, right down the molten mouth of the smoker.  I was astounded.  And even more so when a second bee pulled the same suicide stunt.

Given the extreme angst of the yellow hive, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when the occasional errant bee attacked Andrew and me as we worked in the garden the next day.  One of them pursued a neighbor as he walked his dog on the street later that afternoon.  My neighbor was cool about it, but I was not.  I can't have my bees going after people on the street, for heaven's sake.  Can it be that I am going to have to destroy Team Yellow?

I saw my beekeeping teacher Ray Lackey at a bee meeting last weekend and asked him about my experience.  He said that he has heard of some bees who, instead of being calmed by smoke are actually riled by it.  I asked him if he thought I should try spraying them with sugar water instead of smoke next time I inspect the hive.  He thinks that might work.  Of course he suggested going into the hive and finding the queen and 'replacing' (read 'murdering') her.  Team Yellow is so populous at this point that I don't have any confidence that I could find her.  I may be able to reduce the population, however, by manipulating the positions of the hives, tricking some of the members of Team Yellow to join the other colonies.  With a reduced population, it would be easier to find the yellow queen.

It took Team Yellow a good 3 or 4 days before they stopped chasing us around the yard.  Things are calm now, and I think I have several management strategies to try before I just throw a tarp over the hive and smother all its inhabitants.  Oh, that it has come to this.  I feel like I'm in a Shakespearean play.

I put honey supers on all three hives, hoping that with the early spring there might be an early honey flow.  We shall see.  Oh, and with the last of the honey, I'm planning to give mead making a try.  Perhaps I'll start a batch within the next week or two.