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Bees in High Places
By: Stephen Bishop
Another swing, another miss. This was supposed to be the year, the year I put everything together. My production hives made it through Winter in great shape. In the fifteen years or so I’ve kept bees, I doubt I would have ever gone as far as to say, “great shape.” Certainly, I have had some disaster years, especially those first few years, in which I lost nearly everything and then questioned my life choices. But mostly I’ve had mediocre years where some hives came through Winter booming, others were just limping along, and most were somewhere in between.
I had gotten used to mediocrity; I knew how to manage for mediocrity. With mostly booming hives, my blessing became my curse in disguise. You probably know what happened. I didn’t put the brakes on strong enough. What had worked in previous years — reversing brood boxes and a little equalizing here and there — was just a temporary setback in my bee’s determination to repopulate the tree cavities in the surrounding countryside. There is no telling how many swarms I lost.
Despite using lemongrass oil and a variety of other proprietary concoctions to woo my wayward bees back in a box, most of my swarms seemed determined to ascend and vanish into the ether. My problem is that my hives are in a little quarter-acre opening in the woods. This is a good spot in most regards. It is somewhat shaded during blazing hot Summer honey harvests, and somewhat sunny in the Winter when the large oak, hickory, and poplars shed their leaves. The problem is one large oak limb stretches out directly over my hives about thirty-five feet up. This, of course, is where most of my swarms decide to settle.
Thirty-five feet up is a long way up, especially when you are staring straight up with a five-gallon bucket duct-taped to a bendy pole you’re trying to keep steady. Well, really two poles. I attached the bucket to the end of a twelve-foot paint-pole which I duct-taped to a twenty-five-foot telescoping survey rod. I’m not sure if the woodland creatures thought it was a tragedy or a comedy when the bucket broke off and plonked me in the head, but my wife sure had a good laugh. From a safe distance, she was directing my jabbing with the bucket because it was really hard for me to gauge depth perception while I was staring straight up with the veil on my head.
Needless to say, I did not recapture that swarm or any of the other swarms that settled on that limb. In desperation, I thought about shooting them down, but my wife wouldn’t let me, citing various calamities that can arise from firing a firearm straight up in the air.
“What is worse, losing a swarm or downing a satellite?” she asked, rhetorically.
“Well, if it is a government satellite spying on me…”
Just kidding, I’m not one of those crazy conspiracy theorists who believe government satellites are spying on me all the time, just some of the time. That said, I’m starting to have an open mind about alien abductions because nearly all the swarms that settled on that limb eventually ascended upward into the sky and over the trees, in a little whirlwind, as if they were being beamed up to a mothership. In fact, if I remember correctly, I’m pretty sure that was the whole premise of an X-Files episode — the aliens needed the bees to spread some sort of virus to wipe out the human race, plus the aliens really liked sourwood honey.
Anyway, I’m not saying aliens are real. But, isn’t it crazy where your mind goes right after you’ve been bonked on the head with a bucket?
