What would you do for a jar of honey?

If you love honey as much as John and the boys do then you would climb 40 feet in the air to capture a swarm of bees.

I really can't believe that I am actually writing about this. Well, maybe not that I am writing about it, because I like to write about everything. But I can't believe this sequence of events actually took place in my family and on our farm and once again, I had ZERO control over the situation. That is normally the way frightening situations pan out for me ... and all for good reason. If I were to have any ounce of control in this type of situation, I am certain that I would surrender almost instantly. I would rather run from danger instead of run to it... especially when the gain is so insignificant.

Let's start with last Thursday and I will set the stage for what happened on Saturday. Late on Thursday evening John went into the bee hives with intentions of splitting the two hives into four hives. After a lengthy inspection of the state of the hives, he engaged in a conversation with Beau about what was going on with me inside the house. Our security system monitoring company called to test our alarm system and with John being in the hive, I felt it was necessary to inform him that the alarm was soon to sound. Apparently all of this discussion and movement distracted John and allowed 3 bees inside his veil. He was stung twice in his left eyelid and once on the right cheekbone. Soon afterward, he was stung on the thumb as well. He managed to get through with his job and then came inside to remove the stingers out of his eyelid about 45 minutes later. Can you just imagine what his face looked like? Here is a quick description... Rocky Balboa on a bad day! Poor thing was a mess. The next day the left eye was swollen shut and the right eye was almost as bad as the left. So a trip to the doctor, a cortisone shot, and 2 days later things were starting to look brighter for him. Well, he could at least open both eyes.

Now, on to the swarm. Late Saturday afternoon while walking through the chicken yard we heard the loud BUZZing nearby. We looked up and watched an amazing presentation of organized chaos as the bees from hive 10 began to swarm. It was very cool to watch. Imagine miniature black fireworks (the bees) on a white background (the sky). In a way, it was sort of ominous. The chickens stood as still as we did, watching the spectacle unfold. As exciting as it was to see such an awesome display of nature at work; knowing John, I soon began to fear what was going to take place next. I have always heard John talk about swarm season, but never realized what it actually required of the beekeeper.

So the bees formed a tight cluster around the queen on a very high branch about 40 feet above the hive boxes. At this point, I am simply disappointed that we have lost so many bees. John, on the other hand, is fetching the 20 foot ladder. Suddenly my disappointment gave way to fear. Yes, he did! He climbed the ladder not once, but four times, to try to recover the bees. How do you coax thousands of bees into a bucket while you are dangling 40 feet in the air? I still don't know ... mainly because I couldn't watch. For many reasons, I was so afraid for him. First, with all of the stings he already had from Thursday, I feared he might get stung again. Next, I kept picturing him falling from the tree. How could I help him if he fell? Help would be pointless for him, I would be the one in need of help. I actually began to envision him falling and screaming. So, I just had to do the only thing I knew how to do... I snapped some pictures and went inside until it was all over.

In the end, it seems that he was successful! Apparently, he was able to capture the queen in the bucket and place her in the empty hive box. We can assume this is true as for the next hour or so we witnessed the bees standing at the entrance of the hive fanning their wings with their tails in the air. As with any swarm, the queen emits a pheromone that directs the worker bees to her and these workers were fanning the scent to the others. Today, it seems that they are happy in their new home. Bees are simply amazing!

Why do bees swarm? In our case, John feels the bees swarmed as a propagation method when a new queen hatched as he saw many queen cells in hive 10 on Thursday.