We waited for what seemed like forever to get the call to pick up our packages of local Carniolan/Italian cross honeybees, locally bred on Vancouver Island. I watched as the first flush of dandelions and then the fruit trees were visited by other local pollinators as well as our Mason bees, and worried how long I was going to need to feed our package bees for - if the local pollen and nectar sources were in a lull when they finally arrived. Our beehives had been sitting vacant since the beginning of the year, so I raced to pick up our order when I was finally contacted.
So we got the bee packages installed the morning after they arrived (on a rainy evening), after making sure to feed them sugar syrup several times while they were trapped in their package. On Thursday morning, the girls were gentle and quiet - or as quiet as you would expect after being shaken into a strange wooden box. The syrup feeders were set up in the hive bodies, and the entrances reduced to allow them time to settle in and make sure they had protection from intruders.
I was out in the garden on Friday afternoon, planting some seeds, when I heard quite a bit of loud buzzing. An investigation led me to the biggest cherry tree in our orchard, where there were thousands of bees swirling about around the top branches. My first thought was that they were reacting to the sunshine and still orienting themselves to the new location, but I wanted to keep an eye on the process. About 45 minutes later, I saw a small bundle of bees start to form up, on a branch about 25 feet in the air, near the middle of the tree canopy. Not good - the likelihood was that there was one of my new queens in the center of that mass, and I ran to get a pillowcase and don my veil and gloves, wondering how I was going to get up there with the ladder all by myself. By the time I got back outside, the air was clear, and the swarm was gone. There were still bees flying about both hive entrances, though they sounded considerably more agitated. I didn't really want to further disturb them, in case the remaining colony decided it wanted to move on as well. I waited for the day to cool off, thinking that at that point there was really nothing I could do to turn back the clock.
Just after 7:30, I got suited up and wandered with apprehension towards the hives. It was too quiet, and I soon discovered that one hive was empty, while the second had less than a quarter of the bees it had contained the day before (as a mental image, these were 3-pound packages of approximately 10,000 bees). We're still not sure if there is a queen in the hive, as there's minimal chance to find her with them clumping and building comb in an otherwise barren space - but they sound calm and are going about their business.
This morning, after a very bad night's sleep, and an e-mail conversation with the beekeeper who sold me the packages that ended with 'sorry I can't help you,' as well as a vague reminder that top bar hives aren't standard practice and there's never any guarantee with hiving, I got up with the early morning light and slowly wandered about the orchard and lawn, peering up into all of the trees, and listening hard for the sound of several thousand honeybees.
In the end, the swarm I found was on the mulch at the base of one of the plum trees, and they were almost perfectly silent. I got Adrian out of bed, and the 2 of us suited up and prepped a couple of light cardboard boxes, in the hopes of being able to scoop the swarm and dump them back into the hive body.
Unfortunately, they had settled in and around several plants, and there was quite a bit of dirt and mulch that went into the box with them as we tried to ensure that we got the marked queen. They were not happy being disturbed, and I was sweating very nervously, being stung while we both had our heads and hands down low, trying to find that green-dotted body to ensure we managed to take her with her workers. The air was filled with loud angry buzzing then, and I could actually feel the vibrations from the bees landing on me as they announced their warning.
The box contents were 'dumped' into the hive body as quickly and gently as possible, given the amount of plant matter and dirt that had to be scooped up in the process.
About 45 minutes later, there was still a small clump of bees on the ground, so we collected them and quickly put them in the hive as well, just in case they had been protecting our queen. We've closed up all the entrances to the hive, and they had managed to gorge themselves on an entire quart of sugar syrup before absconding, so they won't be hungry for a bit. Hopefully a bit of time will help things seem and smell a bit more like home, and help them decide to set up shop where we put them in the first place. Fingers crossed.
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