Don’t Look Like a Bear!
New honeybees swarmed into our area, and they’re not very friendly.
Great news: Last year’s honeybees survived their first year here and are actively gathering pollen for honey. More great news: another swarm has taken up residence in an abandoned hive and is busy building honeycomb.
The irony—to me, at least—is that these new bees chose an old hive and honey frames their predecessors abandoned a couple of years ago.
Back then, we watched one of our first hives swarm, leaving their still-new hive. They formed a great cloud in the air, eventually settling quite high in a nearby tree. We offered a fresh hive and attractants that should have caught their attention but, alas, we could neither catch them nor lure them back.
Where we saw failure, though, these new bees saw opportunity.
They found the cleaned and partially reconstructed beehive in an outbuilding, where we had left it while we decided whether to bother with bees again.
The bottom board wasn’t in place, the brood box was only partially filled with frames for honeycombs, and the honey super was sitting next to it all (rather than on top of the brood box). It’s rather like a Medieval castle with its drawbridge down and its towers only partially completed. They saw it and thought, “Home!”
Some elements, like the honey super, can be adjusted easily. Others will take some thought because these bees don’t like being messed with.
I suspect they’re Carniolan bees, which are popular among beekeepers along the coast because they will fly despite cool, cloudy conditions. Consequently, they go into winter with 15% more honey than the more finicky, but less defensive, Italian bees we started with.
Randy, my husband, was stung inside his bee suit by this new swarm. Understandably, he says the Carniolan bees are just mean. He had removed the top of the hive to see what this new swarm was up to. (They’ve made quite a honeycomb across the tops of the honey frames.) They immediately found an opening in his beekeeping suit, which sent us both running. We haven’t checked again.
The bees saw him as an aggressor. Beekeeping classes advise smoking the bees and “not looking like a bear” – hence the white beekeeping outfit. That’s true regardless the species of bees, but the term “aggressively defends their hive” appears frequently in relation to Carniolan bees.
When we got our first Carniolan hives a few years ago, two flew directly into my forehead at speed and stung me. I ran to the kitchen and drenched my forehead in vinegar (to break down the protein from the sting) before making it upstairs to our medicine kit. Our first hives didn’t behave like that!
I miss the little Italian bees we started with. They had such sweet dispositions! They even let me watch them enter the hive with their pollen-filled sacks from mere inches away and never fear being stung. Sadly, they weren’t the hardiest, and not the best fit for our climate. (They don’t fly on cool, cloudy days, of which we have many.) Apart from one sticky finger just to see what their honey tasted like, we never took any honey from them because we believed they needed everything they made to survive the winter.
All that said, we’re happy to have this new swarm, whatever species it is, decided to leave the hive where it is. We’re seriously considering screening off part of the outbuilding, though, so we can direct their entrances and exits and thus safely use the area ourselves.
Not everybody wants beehives nearby, though. If you’re among them, contact a local beekeeping group and ask if someone can capture and remove the hive. Facebook is a good resource to find local groups, and someone usually will be happy to help out.
With a new hive, plus an older one that seems to be thriving (knock on wood), we’re finally hopeful of getting some honey!
What’s your favorite type of honey? Clover? Wildflower? Sage? Something else? I’d love to know! Personally, I like our bees’ blend of elder and red maple, although I only got a tiny taste…and only once.
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