Show Me the Honey Read online

  Bill had made arrangements with the forestry company weeks before to get an extra key cut for the gate. Two other groups of beekeepers had also been granted access to the area and the key would be shared among us. To simplify things (or to complicate them, as I would later learn), the key was hidden in a secret spot under a rock near the gate.

  About 10 minutes into the bone-jarring section of road, we noticed more bees leaking out of the one poorly packed hive on Bill’s truck. At first it was a couple dozen bees escaping, then a hundred, and the next thing we knew, hundreds and hundreds of bees were flowing out in all directions. His hive had not been properly prepared for transport, a lid or box had been displaced or damaged, and the bees were now madly flying off to who knows where.

  Measurements of activities compared to units of time are useful scientific tools. They can also be handy devices in storytelling. For instance, when I describe miles per hour (mph) or feet per second (fps), you know exactly what I am talking about. At this juncture, I offer a new measurement for which I waive all copyright, thus generously donating the term to the beekeeping community: bees per minute, or bpm. It measures the number of bees that pass through any given point and onto a windshield within 60 seconds.

  The number of bees escaping Bill’s truck right after the five-vehicle convoy left the side of the highway was about 1 bpm. As he increased his speed on the smooth highway surface, the bpm increased as well. While Jeannie drove, I tried to count the bees leaking out of Bill’s hive. They were not hard to spot in the headlights of Jeannie’s dad’s truck, and I added those to the casualties mounting up on our windshield. After about five minutes of driving at 60 mph, I roughly calculated that the bpm had increased to about 5. After we left the paved highway and turned onto the dirt farm road, the bpm doubled to 10. When we hit the even bumpier mountain road, the bpm took a quantum leap to 20 and gradually increased as the sloppily packed hive on the back of Bill’s truck slowly disintegrated. Jeannie and I watched in shock and amazement as the bpm hit 25, 30, and then 40. Our windshield was getting all sticky with dead bees.

  Bees that leave a hive out in the middle of nowhere, with no way to get back, will die. Bees are communal creatures that can’t live on their own. After the bees escaped the hive in the back of the truck, their hive would be placed 20 miles away in the outyard, well beyond their range. If they found another hive to join, one that had been created in nature, the denizens of that hive would likely reject them. As the road got bumpier and the bpm increased, the poorly prepared hive became more morbid. The escalating loss of bee life was tragic.

  We honked our horn to let Bill know about the death toll on the back of his truck. He waved at us to indicate he was aware but didn’t stop. We realized he was up against time and had to keep his foot on the gas pedal to lead us to the outyard before sunrise, when the bees would begin to sizzle. He had no time to stop and repair the broken hive. He just kept on trucking up the steep hill, and as his speed increased and the road got worse, the bpm hit 100. Bill was an experienced beekeeper; clearly he was sacrificing that one hive for the greater good of the group.

  Finally, he had to stop when our bee transport reached the metal security gate cordoning off the forestry area, which was off limits to the public. It was a heavy steel gate that meant business; stating NO TRESPASSING was unnecessary because without the key to unlock the gate, entering the restricted area was impossible. Bill got out of his truck and searched for the hidden key. While he was looking, Jeannie and I watched in dismay as hundreds more bees broke out of his hive. An angry swarming cloud emerged. It grew and grew, like a dark storm on the horizon. But the sun was rising and there was no time to patch up the poorly prepared, leaky hive. The other million or so bees warming in their hives on the backs of the other trucks had to be released soon or they would all die. It took Bill longer to find the key than anticipated. We fell even further behind schedule. He finally found it, and we passed through the gate.

  The last leg of the mountain road leading up to the freshly cleared outyard was the roughest and worst by far. The road was meant for massive heavy-duty logging trucks; the potholes were the size of small refrigerators. Since the area it serviced had already been logged, the road had sat unused and unmaintained for years. It was an almost impassably steep grade. We lost more precious time.

  All five beehives on the back of Bill’s truck bashed harder and harder into one another and even bounced into the sides of the truck bed with thuds and bangs that I was sure could be heard all the way back in the last truck in the convoy. The poorly packed hive crumbled before our very eyes. We had no choice but to watch its destruction. Then Bill hit the mother of all potholes and the bpm index went through the roof, peaking at about 1,000. So many bees were streaming from that hive on the last mile that it looked like a jet plane’s long contrail, and Jeannie had to turn on the windshield wipers. Mayday! Mayday!

  We finally reached the outyard at 6:45AM, under the rapidly warming rays of the morning sun. All five trucks parked hastily in a random grouping amid the lush fireweed. Drivers and beekeepers scrambled out to check their precious live cargo. As we inspected Jeannie’s four hives, she didn’t need to say a word; her smug grin spoke for itself. Not one bee from her four hives had gotten away. Her attention to detail in packing the hives had saved bee lives. I sheepishly and obediently followed her orders for the next stage of the outyard set-up.

  Bill opened the electric outyard fence, and we all hustled to carry our 100-pound hives through and put them into place. All together, we needed to offload about 30 hives from the trucks and transport them 200 yards to the interior of the outyard fence. As it got warmer and warmer, controlled panic set in; each beekeeper rushed to find suitable locations for the hives. Only after the hives were in place could we release the bees from their mobile sun-baked wooden saunas. To make matters worse, the last 10,000 bees in the dilapidated hive on the back of Bill’s truck had escaped and were swarming in confusion around us, making it difficult to see. The screened facial veil of the beekeeper’s costume also restricts vision. There were so many bees leaking out of that broken hive that dozens of them were now clinging to the screen in front of my face while sweat from the hot sun poured down my brow and ran into my eyes.

  Truck gates clanged and hives were transported off the tailgates. Carrying a beehive is a hard, back-breaking, two-or three-person job. The uneven ground, poor vision, and beekeeper collisions made it even harder. Our hives were stacked only four boxes high, so Jeannie and I could manage them on our own. But some of the hives were stacked five or six boxes high, requiring a heavy-duty moving dolly to transport them, except that a dolly does not move so well over a soft, bumpy field. As all 11 beekeepers tussled back and forth between the trucks and the fenced area, we resembled a punk-rock mosh pit. With the 10,000 agitated displaced bees as part of the frantic dance, it felt like we were storming the beaches of Normandy in the Second World War and dodging chaos.

  Specific tasks—in order—were required to achieve our beekeeping objectives within the limited time we had at the outyard that morning:

  Carry each hive from the truck to the outyard.

  Place the hives on even ground, carefully spaced, with the bee doors facing southeast.

  Remove the straps, fasteners, wooden reinforcements, and ropes.

  Last, and most important, remove the duct tape covering the beehive doors and release the bees.

  Some of us were still struggling with step one, while other beekeepers were on step four, releasing their bees. Every time that important grey duct tape came off a hive entrance, 10,000 or 20,000 bees burst out of the hot hive and swarmed out into the fireweed for their first breakfast. The number of bees increased from 10,000 to 300,000, circling and dining in an area no larger than a small house. Their buzzing intensified, and the sheer number of them blocked the sun, casting an Armageddon pall over the outyard. It was out of control, and just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did.

  Remem
ber that sixth truck that never showed up at the meeting place? Well, at that moment, it finally chugged up into the outyard, and as the expression goes, it was “a day late and a dollar short.” Whoever had readied the hives in that last truck clearly didn’t get the memo. Not only had very little preparation been done to transport the hives, but also they were rotten and falling apart—probably due to wet rot or termites, I wasn’t sure which. As the beekeeper attempted to haul each hive out of the back of his truck, the hives simply fell apart. He placed one of them on the ground and the bottom box imploded under the weight of the four boxes on top of it, violently spilling the contents of all five boxes (tens of thousands of bees) into the already insect-laden air.

  Two or three beekeepers, including me, rushed to his aid. In my haste to assist, I ran in my bee suit over the bumpy terrain to his truck, but it was almost impossible to see. I tripped over a big dolly and fell face first to the ground. Beekeeper down! I lay there battered, imprisoned in my hot bee suit, and covered in bugs with grains of soil in my mouth. I wished, again, I had taken up stamp collecting.

  Pulling myself up, I paused to fully appreciate the number of bees swarming around us. When I looked down I could barely see my feet. Years ago when I went scuba diving, I swam right into a condensed school of fish, and as I frantically paddled to escape, I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me. The only difference was that the underwater encounter was void of sound, while this situation had such a constant buzzing that it sounded like a couple of vacuum cleaners had been strapped to each side of my head. Regaining my wits, I stood and limped slowly to the aid of Mr. Sloppy Truck; a few of us helped reassemble the crumbled frames and boxes on the ground.

  By this point, all 30 of the other hives were in place inside the electric fence with their front doors wide open. It’s no exaggeration to say that about half a million bees buzzed around us, and the newly released bees were not happy campers. They were downright pissed off—hot, in totally unfamiliar territory, and flying around with hundreds of thousands of strange bees from other hives. Show me an unhappy bee, and I’ll show you a bee that is about to sting someone.

  Despite Jeannie taking precautions before we left her house that morning, duct taping her wrists and ankles and wearing thick clothes underneath the bee suit, she was assaulted. One bee either found its way into Jeannie’s suit or was determined enough to plant its stinger through the suit’s canvas and her inner fleece. Jeannie ran up to let me know she’d been stung. It still astounds me that the one person stung out of our 11-person group was the one person who is allergic to bee stings. The nearest hospital was an hour and a half down the road. We needed to get Jeannie out of there immediately.

  On the way up to the outyard that morning, Bill had locked the gate behind him and returned the key to the secret location. I had not paid attention to where that spot was and knew that without the key we would be stuck, so I had to find Bill and get him to explain exactly where the key was. But to find him in the fog of half a million bees—and within the group of people dressed in identical bee suits—was difficult and wasted precious time. Jeannie had sought refuge in the truck’s cab, away from the bees, where she peeled off her protective suit in order to inspect the sting on her thigh.

  There are everyday directions and then there are important directions. These directions were of the latter variety, and I wished Jeannie could back me up on the listening end. I had already proven the night before that listening isn’t my strong point. I find it’s best to have two people listen to directions, and when Jeannie and I travel, it is invaluable to have her attentive ears as backup. But as Bill stood in front of the truck talking me through the steps to find the key, Jeannie couldn’t open the window and listen because that would have let bees into the truck cab. And I couldn’t write the directions down because the bee suit gloves are so cumbersome, it would have been impossible to hold a pen. Besides, I didn’t even have a pen. My brain felt like a sieve that couldn’t hold anything, let alone potentially life-saving, detailed directions. I tried my best to memorize what he told me and then hopped into the truck, waving the bees out as I opened the door. I started the engine and booted it. Weaving around the other trucks and trailers in the meadow, I manoeuvred onto the bumpy logging road and then proceeded at three times the speed we’d been travelling when we came up.

  At all times when tending bees, Jeannie now wisely carries an EpiPen, a syringe loaded with a measured dose of adrenaline, and Benadryl pills, an antihistamine with a side effect of making you sleepy. As we sped down the unmaintained mountain road, she clutched the Benadryl bottle in her hand. Drinking a gulp of cold, leftover coffee from a stainless-steel commuter cup, she downed two pills. Thankfully, her symptoms did not yet warrant the EpiPen.

  Still, our tension mounted when, 10 minutes into the drive, we reached the locked gate. As I hurriedly clambered out of the truck, I mentally rehearsed what Bill had said: “The key is hidden right after you see a big rock on the left behind the gate. Look 10 feet toward the fence on the right and there are three little rocks in a row—it’s under the middle one.” Wandering around the gate in a panic, vagueness crept in and I second-guessed whether the first direction was a right or a left. This treasure hunt was off to a bad start. The sea of rocks alongside the road all looked the same. Which one hid the key? Finally I found the right rock, pounced on it, and grabbed the key. So close to victory, I then couldn’t figure out which end of the gate had the padlock. Even when I spotted it, I had a hard time fitting the key into the lock. Jeannie had to get out to help me. I was so happy when she told me then that she was not yet feeling the sting’s effect. But we weren’t out of the woods yet, figuratively or literally. We had half an hour of a logging road to go before getting back onto the highway. Later Jeannie would confess that as she sat in the truck cab watching me poke the key at the gate’s hinge instead of the padlock, she thought we were doomed. Why am I so clueless?

  Forgetting to close the gate behind me, I floored the gas pedal and we sped away, fishtailing around corners. Our cellphones were out of range, so there was no one we could call. We were on our own. I had no idea of our fate as we waited for the toxic bee venom to take effect. What a cruel trick for nature to play on us—there we were, transporting these amazing creatures to a wonderful setting where they could eat as much as they wished, and the thanks we got was a bite on the hand (or, in this case, the thigh) that feeds them. Then I thought of the tens of thousands of bees that had been slaughtered because of careless hive preparation. Perhaps it was divine intervention payback time?

  Every minute that went by without Jeannie going into shock, I felt more relief. Stings and the way humans react to them are inconsistent and remain a medical mystery. Although there was some swelling around the sting, it seemed to be spreading slowly and not affecting her in any other serious way, whereas her last reaction had resulted in excruciating welts, a quickened heart rate, and hot flashes. Around 10:00AM, we finally pulled into a strip mall leading into town, where we crawled out of the truck cab, hugged each other, and found a coffee shop. We both drank copious amounts of water and coffee and then returned to Jeannie’s place, happy to be alive. The Benadryl’s sedating side effect having kicked in, Jeannie slept for the rest of the day. That gave me some quiet time to reflect upon the last 12 hours.

  Many lessons in life are learned from mistakes. And that trip to the outyard was full of mistakes. It goes without saying that I learned beehives must be properly fortified and prepared for a major move. If I didn’t learn that, I don’t deserve to keep bees. The next two takeaways have more to do with the bee club than with me. In hindsight, we could have met at 4:00AM instead of 5:00AM. So much stress and tension that morning was caused by a pretty predictable event: the rising of the sun. We could have avoided the intense pressure to get the bees out before they cooked if we had simply left an hour earlier. The final point has to do with releasing the bees once the hives were in place within the outyard. A bit of coordination
could have gone a long way. As a group, we should have decided that we would release the bees only once every hive was in place. Finally, Jeannie’s allergy to stings remains a concern she is addressing. She has since undergone bee-sting desensitization treatments with an allergist that will reduce her chances of having a reaction in the future.

  After reviewing all the dumb human mistakes we made, I considered the bees and the role they played on that calamitous morning when the Keystone Cops of Beekeeping moved them to an outyard. Did those savvy little creatures sense our missteps and collectively take advantage of us? Had the 1.5 million bees just had enough? Were they fed up after the cruel shake-and-bake treatment we put them through on the trucks? Did they consciously decide to retaliate? Were they smart enough to single out the one member of our beekeeping group who was allergic to bees? Did they appoint the strongest bee to attack her?

  I decided that, rather than ruminate on negative subjects like “bee revenge,” I should focus on the positive. We had successfully transferred 30 hives of bees, with a total population exceeding the population of the city of Phoenix, to where they were safely lodging in prime nectar country. All those bees were now happily chowing down on the bee equivalent of filet mignon: fireweed. I had learned a great deal, much more than I would have sitting at home reading a how-to beekeeping book, and Jeannie and I were still on speaking terms. All in all, the day had been worthwhile. Exhausted, I popped a Benadryl and joined Jeannie in a long afternoon nap.

  As a postscript to this story, I need to point out that beekeeping at the outyard is different from tending a single hive in your backyard. Many beginner beekeepers can safely tend those single home hives with little protective clothing. The outyard, however, is so concentrated with bees that it makes the proper protective gear a life-preserving necessity.

  God Save the Queen

  The queen bee, as her title implies, is the royal bee all worker bees and drones love, respect, and worship—the exalted empress for whom they work their brown-and-yellow tails off. She is it: the monarch with the most. The future of the entire hive rests upon her shoulders, or, more specifically, her thorax. As a beginner beekeeper I had a tough time spotting the queen, an important skill I needed to develop if I wanted to keep on with it.