Greg Carey
You’ve been handling bees for a while and are feeling very confident. It’s a nice day, and you are into one of your strongest Long Lang colonies when the unthinkable happens. You drop a beautiful frame of bees at your feet!
And just like that you are dancing with the bees. No one else can hear music. From afar, an observer would probably suspect that you had discovered gold like in one of those old black and white gold rush westerns. The music finally dies down about the same time as your vocabulary runs dry, and you’re stuck standing there looking down at a beautiful pile of honey bees.
What do you do? You have already walked away several times. They are your bees, and no one is going to ask to cut in. First, you light up and blow some smoke in the faces of the older more aggressive dancers. Once the old girls have settled down, you are left with a pile of younger, confused crawlers trying to decide whether to ask you to dance or just chat with their sisters.
Pro Tip: Patience is key to most everything when the colony is open and becomes more important when stuff is going wrong.
I gently picked up the dropped frame and slowly removed all the large debris that was stuck to it. I then replaced the frame into the hive and covered the frame tops with a working cloth. The bees calmed down a bit while I went to get my spray bottle of thin syrup and a frame of slightly drawn foundation.
I sprayed the foundation frame with the syrup and leaned it against the stand leg near the pile of bees. Using the smoker on the distant edge of the pile encouraged them to start in the direction of the bait frame that smelled somewhat of a punch bowl. I then went back to my original inspection and once it was complete, I noted that most of the bees had climbed aboard the bait frame, were lapping up the syrup, and chatting amongst themselves.
I could see some of the bees scenting as they climbed on board, letting their sisters know that there was a free ride back into the hive waiting on them.
I forgot to mention. It is very important that when you’re dancing that you put some distance between you and the pile of bees. This is sort of the natural thing to do, but just know that they hate it when you step on their toes.
Anyway, once the majority were loaded onto the bait frame, it was a simple matter to just pick the frame up and put them back into their home, only slightly worse for wear.
If you are wondering, why not just use the frame you dropped? You could do this. In my case there were brood to think about, and I didn’t want to add insult to injury by allowing them to cool their heels outside the hive.
I mentioned the working cloth earlier which you can see here. I use our old bath towels for this and rarely wash them. They pick up the hive scent, and when covering the frame tops, I’ve found that the bees continue about their business like I’m not even there.
Finally and obviously, this was not the first time I’ve dropped a frame of bees. The first time I was asked to dance in this fashion, I got so excited that I completely forgot that the camera had even been invented. I am not a wall flower and have been on the dance floor before and will probably be there again. I just thought you might like to hear of some of the moves I have picked up along the way.
The bees will choose the music. The older ones seem to like the jitterbug while the younger ones are content to hang out around the punch bowl with their sisters. Our part is to get them back home safely at a respectful time.
