Twenty stings later

A beekeeping anecdote in celebration of my new column

I’m honored to have my column, Bee Space, featured in the Boyertown Bulletin, an ad supported newspaper serving the Boyertown area of Berks County, PA. The monthly column will run for the next year and is intended to help get people started in beekeeping.

The Bulletin’s editor, Eric Eidle, invited me to contribute after my talk at the Boyertown Historical Society on beekeeping past and present. I’m happy to contribute my slice of knowledge, the product of years of hardcore dabbling. It’s also some of the easiest content I’ve ever written, because I could write about bees in my sleep (time to plug my novel, Here, the Bees Sting).

The following story is going to demonstrate why I may not be the person to give out advice about beekeeping after all.

I thought I was hot shit because I had an article published.

The title of the article was “Hunting Stands for Bait Boxes,” and I got paid $150 for it to appear in Bee Culture magazine. Bee Culture was and is a respectable bee rag. At the time, Kim Flottum was the editor and the author of my favorite beginner beekeeping book, The Backyard Beekeeper. He’d accepted the article and the check was deposited quickly, going into that limitless black hole needed to fund a beekeeping operation in the 21st century. The article was about catching feral honey bee swarms using hunting tree stands.

I’d gotten the idea from hanging out in trees on a regular basis. Hunting deer from trees is much easier than doing it on the ground, and the tree stands you put up tend to stay in one place because of what a pain it is to erect them.

The height of most tree stands, anywhere between 10-20 feet off the ground, also happens to be the preferred height for honey bee swarms. Honey bees evolved alongside bears and humans, two predators known for loving honey. Honey bees know implicitly that nesting high off the ground in a tree cavity is going to be far safer than nesting on the ground. Other species that don’t produce a surplus of nectar, like yellow jackets, have no problem with nesting on the ground. Nobody will bother them.

Catching a honey bee swarm is an immensely satisfying experience. In brief, it’s free bees! A “package” of bees costs anywhere from $100-150, so getting a healthy swarm is like money in the bank. Truly wild swarms from completely feral hives, some speculate, may have unique genetics that helps fight common honey bee pests.

If you want more information on how to catch a swarm, Tom Seeley’s paper “Bait Hives for Honey Bees” is a great resource for understanding swarm dynamics and what you can do to catch some bees for yourself. The cheat sheet is that bees like to be up off the ground, and seek an enclosed space around the size of two or three shoeboxes with a one inch entrance, facing south. Old beeswax helps them feel at home. Lemongrass oil is also used as an attractant, mimicking the calling scent of the hive.

For a few years after implementing my tree stand bait hives, I caught bees. Nice swarms, too. Here’s a picture of a swarm making its home in an old bait hive I set up.

There I was, $150 richer, with my little swarm catching operation going swimmingly. It felt good. And then I got cocky.

I caught a swarm right on time, in May, but unlike previous years, I didn’t get them out of the tree. “They’ll be fine for a few days,” I told myself. “No worries.”

In a technical sense, I was right. The bees would love to be high up in a tree, using old wax frames my bees had drawn out. But what I’d forgotten was how prolific a swarm could be. In a way, it’s as if the swarm is deeply empowered with a sense of desperation. Instead of sequestered in a tight cavity, easily defended, the swarm can spend days out in the field. I’d forgotten how quickly they build comb and build food reserves after a swarm. So as I lazed around, neglecting the swarm I’d caught high up in the tree stand, it got bigger. And heavier. And bigger and heavier.

By the time I climbed the stand some weeks later to take the swarm out of the tree, the hive must have weight fifty or sixty pounds. My timing could not have been worse. When I reached out to haul the bees off, I realized how screwed I was.

When I was in Boy Scouts, the organization tried to teach me knots. Year after year, they took us through the bowline, the half hitch, the sheet bend. And maybe they’d delve into advanced knots with names I can’t remember: the One Half Bent Sheep; the Browline; the Arrogant Writer. One year I made a monkey fist, which I thought was cool, even though I had no idea why one would tie such a knot. To this day, I remembered exactly none of the knots I’d been taught.

I employed every neuron of that lackluster knowledge in my attempt to lash and lower the heavy hive out of the tree. I used a tree branch above the tree stand to help in lowering it.

The scheme seemed to work. My series of square knots and lashings seemed to keep it steady. I swung the hive out from the tree stand and into open air. And something slipped. I watched in horror as the sixty pound hive plummeted out of the tree and hit the ground with a crash. Wooden frames flew apart. There was a pause as the bees overcame their surprise. Then a deep, roaring hum as some thousands of them launched into the air.

My only protective equipment was a veil. No gloves, no bee suit. I’d been cocky. After all, I had published an article on this, therefore I must be an expert.

I climbed down into the storm of bees. As you can expect, they directed their hate at me, though not as badly as I thought. I believe I ran off with only one or two stings to cower in my barn trying to figure out what to do next. Given that I didn’t want the yard to turn into a sting-a-thon, and didn’t want any neighbors stung, or my chickens attacked, I knew I had to move fast. I ran back outside.

Why didn’t I at least put on more clothes? Why didn’t I figure out better protection? I don’t know. Panic, I guess. And I had gotten an article PUBLISHED, remember?

I ran into the maelstrom and the stings began quickly after that. I do carry an expired Epi-pen in my beekeeping kit, in case you were worried about my safety. I wish I could tell you exactly what I did, but the entire episode is a haze of venom. By the time it was over I had a little under two dozen stings. My face was mostly spared, but my wrists and belly and neckline were toast. One or two on my ear. Some had gotten under my shirt to sting me on the back.

The swarm ended up being a fairly strong hive, as I recall, which is good since they almost killed me. Apparently an adult human could get stung some 1000-3000 times before certain death, but I imagine in a practical sense it would be less than that. The histamine reaction is real. You do swell up badly. You can feel the venom hit every organ in your body as it courses through your bloodstream.

These days, I see less swarms in my tree stand bait boxes. I haven’t baited them with lemongrass like I used to. Once stung, twice shy. I am just waiting for the day I internalize knot tying, I think, so I can safely lower a neglected box to the ground.