When Bees Decide to Leave Home
There's something rather satisfying about believing you've got everything under control, especially when you're dealing with several thousand bees.
The bees, however, may have an entirely different opinion about who's in charge.
We've kept bees in our back garden for about six years now. It's one of those hobbies that sounds wonderfully idyllic when you tell people about it.
Fresh honey, happy bees, a lovely garden full of pollinated fruit trees. And most of the time, that's exactly what it is.
Until spring arrives.
When the bees start making plans, without consulting us.
The best-laid plans of bees and beekeepers
Here in New Zealand, we're well into spring and the garden is beginning to wake up after winter.
Which means our bees are getting busy.
Very busy.
My youngest (adult) son has decided he's going to take up beekeeping, so that means he's become my beekeeping apprentice.
Between us, we've been working through our hives, checking how the colonies are developing and making sure they've got enough room.
We decided to split both of the hives to give the growing colonies more space and hopefully discourage them from swarming. Our neighbours are good about the bees, but we do prefer to keep our colonies at home!
You can probably see where this is going.
Because shortly after we'd done our splits, we discovered an enormous cluster of bees hanging in our olive tree.
A swarm.
Oh, brilliant.
Apparently, someone had forgotten to explain our carefully considered management plan to the bees.
And the worst part?
We weren't even sure they were ours!
They could have come from another hive somewhere in the neighbourhood.
Or perhaps one of our colonies had decided that, despite our best efforts, the accommodation was no longer up to standard and they were moving on.
Either way, there they were.
Several thousand bees hanging in a tree, looking for a new home, or waiting for somebody to make the next move.
The olive tree incident
Now, our olive tree is not exactly a convenient place to retrieve a swarm of bees.
It's close to the fence line and on this particular day the wind was blowing in from the west.
And when I say blowing, I mean blowing.
We were expecting more rain and colder weather, which isn't ideal for a homeless colony of bees.
So we needed to persuade them to move somewhere safer. Ever tried to persuade a couple of thousand bees to do what you want???
Ordinarily, we'd shake the bees into a box and go from there. But there were reasons (I'll explain below) that we couldn't do that in this case.
So, we decided to prepare a swarm trap. An old brood frame, some fresh waxed frames and a few crushed sprigs of Lemon Balm should make the accommodation smell inviting. We placed it all in a suitably 'used' box at the foot of the olive tree and hoped for the best.
Did I mention that the swarm was sitting six and a half metres up in the air (that's 21 feet for you non-metric folk).
When you can't shake the bees into a box because they're too high, a swarm trap is the next best option. The theory is that the scent helps attract scout bees looking for a new home.
Of course, knowing the theory and convincing several thousand insects to cooperate are two entirely different things.
We placed the trap.
We watched.
And we waited. For two cold and wet nights we waited...and we hoped the bees would decide that our accommodation was preferable to whatever else they might find in the neighbourhood.
Really, it's not that different from trying to make the characters in your head do what you want.
Then something wonderful happened
The lure worked!
The bees came down.
Not quite in the way we'd originally hoped, but they moved low enough for us to collect them.
There was no more delightful sight for me than arriving home from grocery shopping to see my son, right in amongst the bees, helping to get them into their new home.
My apprentice was having the most wonderful time and I was so happy for him, to be collecting his first swarm, all on his own.
I think that's one of the loveliest things about keeping bees with him. There's always something new to learn and even when things don't go according to plan, there's a tremendous satisfaction in working out what to do next.
Success!
One homeless colony safely housed.
One very happy apprentice.
And one beekeeper who could finally stop worrying about several thousand bees spending another cold, wet night hanging in an olive tree.
Meanwhile, back in the word mines...
The whole springtime bee adventure reminded me of something I've been dealing with in my writing lately.
You can make all the plans you like, you can have a perfectly sensible schedule, a carefully considered strategy and a very clear idea of how things are supposed to unfold.
Then somebody decides to do something totally different.
With the bees, it's swarming.
With my fictional rockstars, it's usually an emotional crisis, an unexpected revelation or somebody making a spectacularly bad decision.
I'm looking at you, Sam MacAvoy.
As I've been finishing BURN, the final book in my Style Strike series, I've had more than a few moments when the characters have decided that my carefully constructed plans are totally irrelevant.
And sometimes they're right, which is rather annoying.
But I've learned that occasionally the best thing to do is stop trying to control every little detail and pay attention to what's actually happening.
Whether it's a colony of bees deciding it needs a new home or a fictional rockstar insisting that his story isn't finished yet, there's probably a lesson in there somewhere.
Although I suspect the bees would prefer I didn't try to turn their housing crisis into a profound observation about life.
All's well that ends well
For now, our newest colony is safely housed and my apprentice is delighted with the whole adventure.
I'm rather pleased too.
There's something ridiculously satisfying about rescuing a swarm and giving it a chance to establish itself. And as I look out towards the little bee yard behind the chicken coop, I'm reminded how lucky I am to have all these wonderful distractions from the writing desk.
The garden.
The chickens.
The bees.
The family.
And, of course, the imaginary rockstars who believe they should take priority over absolutely everything else.
Actually, come to think of it, the bees and the rockstars have quite a lot in common.
They're noisy.
They occasionally behave unpredictably.
They require rather more attention than I'd anticipated.
And despite everything, I wouldn't be without them.
Although at least when the bees get completely out of hand, I can put them in a box.
I've yet to find a reliable way of doing that with Sam MacAvoy.
If anyone has any suggestions, I'm listening.
Love from the word mines,
💕 Toni x
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