They all survived. My
honeybee hives somehow managed to survive another winter. With all
of the gloom and doom in the press about colony-collapse disorder,
I had expected that at least one of my six hives would be pitifully
empty or dead. Thankfully, I was wrong.
Each of the hives
has a different story, similar to the lives of the people around my
family. Some are strong and trouble-free, always producing an
abundance of workers and honey. Others have an endless supply of
problems, including faltering queens, swarming or dismal
production. I’m never sure how each hive will fare — not
only through the winter months when they are snowed in, but also
through the spring and summer — the honey season.
The spring winds of New Mexico have been blowing all day, and humidity is hovering around 4 percent, bone-dry even by our high-desert standards. We’ve had no measurable precipitation for weeks. Compounding the moisture problems, our nighttime spring
temperatures have led to a dismal spring bloom this year. The bees
have had to fly miles in search of blossoming fruit trees. The
neighbor’s trees are brownish and muted this year, not the
usual pallet of showy pink, red and white blooms. I’m hopeful
for spring rain or snow, but the pattern is reminiscent of
previously dry years.
I manage two different styles of
hives — topbar and Langstroth, and each possesses qualities that I
admire. I built my topbar hives with the low-tech tools of a
handsaw and hammer. The wonderful part of topbars is that no
special equipment is needed to make or manage them. But while
they’re cheap and functional, they’re also constantly
in need of inspection. As the workers build free-hanging comb from
the two-inch wooden bars aligned on the top of the hive, I have to
bend, twist and straighten the comb to keep the bees from attaching
it to the sides of the hive or to the neighboring comb. Yet I
don’t need a smoker to calm the bees, and working this hive
is almost meditative. I gently lift one small bar at a time from
the wooden hive without unsettling the rest of the bees. I work
through my other two hives with similar ease.
The bees in
my three Langstroth hives are doing well so far, although their
temperament is different than the topbars. I’ve painfully
learned through successive stings that Lang hives can be
temperamental without smoke. I think this is because all 10 frames
and their workers are exposed as I inspect the hive. Standing to
the side of the first hive, I gently pump a few bellows of smoke
into the front opening. The hive quickly comes to life and hums.
Then the smoke filters its way through the comb and coaxes the
girls and queen into submission. The top of the hive comes off
easily and reveals row upon row of bees sizing me up. Sometimes,
the drone of the bees is deafening. Luckily, that’s not the
case today, and a few more bellows of smoke work like magic.
Langstroth is really the honey production hive. I ordered
these hives from a large factory, where they were cut and machined:
I only had to provide the glue lue and some nails and paint. I lift
the deep wooden frames from the hive and watch the bees scurry
about on the comb. Each frame was individually put together and
filled with a pre-made sheet of wax on which the bees have built
comb.
It’s been a few weeks since the first
inspection of my hives, and the strongest Langstroth hive from last
year has just taken a turn for the worse. The queen is still golden
and looks strong as she walks across the comb with workers
attending her every need, but her egg production has dropped from
several thousand a day to hardly even hundreds. The normally full
pattern of brood in the comb is now spotty. Sensing weakness, the
hive around her has started producing a new queen cell on the
adjacent comb. I wonder if the old queen realizes that her days are
numbered.
The cycle of a new queen is starting. The old
one will begin her day as usual, only to find a quick sting from
the next generation, as she is overthrown and replaced. It reminds
me that life continually hangs in the balance.
Eric Hein is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org). He
writes and tends his bees in Tijeras, New
Mexico.
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