The Bees Knees
Last spring, Ky and I hunkered down at my parents house during the height of our quarantine. Luckily for us, we were able to witness my father’s newly embarked journey as a beekeeper. He received his two hives in mid-April on a sunny cool day. He was suited up in his crisp white bee suit with as much protective gear on as possible. Ky and I, on the other hand, sat a comfortable 200 yards away with binoculars skeptically watching as my father nervously loaded the frames of bees into his hive box. His movements were reactive and abrasive, as I suspect most first year beekeepers are when they hear the drum of 10,000 bees humming for the first time.
Throughout the spring and into the summer, I had escorted my father on a number of routine hive checks. I learned how to light the smoker, use the hive tool to pry frames out the hive boxes, and was able to help spot the queen now and then. I felt a sense of comfort in watching the bees’ purposeful actions and collective social behavior.
Though I did not know it at the time, my father was evidently grooming me to become a beekeeper myself. As I once mocked him for his enthusiasm for his bee arrival, I had been eagerly awaiting for April to roll around so that I could be introduced with two of my very own hives. I have unsurprisingly found honey bees to be a spectacle worth sharing, both with these words and eventually with their viscous work of labor that we all know of as honey.
In preparation for the arrival of 20,000 bees, I enrolled in the University of Minnesota’s Beekeeping in Northern Climates online class - of which I highly recommend. Prior to the crash course in the life of bees and beekeeping, I only had the Bee Movie to reference. Predictably, the outcome of that is a simple realization: don’t trust DreamWorks to accurately depict the social and physiological structure of an insect because it will be wrong. Very wrong. Most obvious of these inaccuracies is the fact that Barry, the main character in the movie, is a disgruntled worker bee. That wouldn’t be possible because the only worker bees in the hive are the females. In fact, all of the labor is done by females. If he were a disgruntled worker bee in the movie, Barry most certainly would not be fulfilled with his role in a real colony. Drones, or male bees, live their whole life in the hive waiting to be evoked by the pheromones of an emerging queen. When a new queen is ready to take her mating flight, she lets all of the drones in the area know. This is the drone’s time to shine. He leaves the hive and if he is lucky to catch up with the new queen, he will be one of the upwards of 20 drones that mate with the queen. By mating with the queen, his endophallus ruptures and he dies shortly after. Talk about being a cog in the machine.
If you didn’t get the message from that, here it is: Be(e)yonce was totally right when she proclaimed that girls run the world. The worker bees build and clean the hive, care and feed the larvae, forage for food, process the food, and fight off any potential threats or intruders. Meanwhile, the drones do not even have the ability to feed themselves or defend any of their caretakers. They do not have stingers and they rely on the worker bees to feed them honey, pollen, and gland secretions.
Bees can teach us a lot about social order and long term resiliency. Honey bees belong to a democracy. They fact-find which promotes consensus that guides decision making for the entire hive. Decision making is not made individually, but rather it is made by calculated commitments to the larger body of life. For instance, when bees sting you, they are killing themselves to let their colony know that you are a potential threat. They do not act out of vengeance, they are simply injecting you with an alarm pheromone to indicate to their sisters what is coming their way. Each bee knows that they themselves cannot survive without the success of the entire colony. That is what makes bee hives “super organisms,” or a life form that has social organization and task specialization that act similarly to specific cell functions of a multi functioning organism. Without one functioning element of the hive, the rest of the hive cannot operate.
What I have come to learn is that beekeeping - for many people - is especially attractive because you have to release your sense of control. You have to read what the bees are telling you, and you have to respond accordingly. It isn’t about fearing the bees, as much as it is about respecting them. When you are having a bad day, you’d hope that other folks can read it and give you more space and be more patient with you. The same rules apply for bees. The bees can have off days and it is your responsibility, as the beekeeper, to see that and respond.
My beekeeping journey unknowingly started last summer, but this first year of beekeeping is a testament to everything that I have learned and will continue to learn about the wonders of bees and sustainable beekeeping. April 15th was my first B-Day. Ky and I made the trek over 151 towards Black Earth, Wisconsin to pick up our nucs (small honey bee hives) from a couple that offered to build our hive boxes. We were met by two gleaming faces - Judy and Billy of Vandehoney. Judy and Billy are both knowledgeable beekeepers and land stewards, among other things. They have been extremely generous sharing insightful information about bees and beekeeping with my father, and luckily now with me.
It is an odd experience to feel an overwhelming sense of calmness and peacefulness when handling 10,000 bees, but that is exactly how I felt when hiving the two new colonies. Many bees would come and land on my hand and I would have to watch them and their behavior - are they just checking me out, are they showing defensive behavior, or was it that my sweaty hands were attracting them. Movements must be slow and with intention, not quick or reactive. It is deeply therapeutic in our rushed, fast paced world. I aim to share these beautifully unique experiences with as many people as possible.
As of now, the bees are busy building up their home and growing their numbers as we head into greater blossoms and warmer days. They will play an important role in pollinating not only our vegetables that must be pollinated in order to fruit, but also our native landscape. Their honey will have a specific flavor that embodies the flavors and seasonality of this farm and the farms around us. We can’t wait to share their honey with our CSA members later in the season and to continue to update you all with this growing adventure and our penetrating love for these hardworking ladies.
