The Accidental Beekeeper: Things Get Ugly

If you missed the first column, here are the basic facts: In the spring of 2013, I accidentally became a beekeeper. And by beekeeper, I mean someone with a hive of honeybees in her yard who knows next to nothing about said bees or how to care for them. In concert with my husband, Patrick, and neighbor, Charlie, I studiously avoided having anything to do with the armed insects living in my yard. Fast forward to early September 2013. We had now been successfully ignoring the bees for nearly six months. I had gotten brave enough to peek at them from a distance, but none of us had been brave enough to open up the hive and look inside.

Then I took a closer look and things did not seem to be going so well. Bees were staggering at the doorstep. Falling over. Poison, I assumed. Clearly, the bees had been foraging in the yard of one of my darn Roundup-happy neighbors and THIS was the result.

(Note: Do not send angry emails telling me what a bad beekeeper I am. See title above. I was not planning on being a beekeeper. These were not my bees. They were merely squatters.)

So, you may be thinking, problem solved! Didn’t want the bees, bees dying, all’s well that ends well. You might be right, if it weren’t for the cursed maternal instinct.

Suddenly, these were MY bees, and they needed me. I called someone who knew someone who had the phone number of a third-generation beekeeper from Rwanda. I called him.

The three of us clustered at a distance while Faustin Nsabumukunzi, wearing not so much as a beekeeping hat, took the top off the hive and peered in. He pulled out a frame (that’s beekeeper talk for the wooden thingy the bees store their honey, pollen and babies on), called me over and handed it to me while he poked around in the hive some more and quickly found the problem—big horrible carpenter ants had moved in, and were living large on the bees’ stores of honey and pollen. They had also killed or eaten the larvae, apparently, because it was tumbleweed city in there. Nothing going on.

I held the frame, bees flew around me, landed on me, flew off again. They did not sting, to my amazement. Even more amazing was how indignant I became on behalf of MY bees. The nerve of those ants!

Faustin quickly pulled out each frame, shook it clear of ants, emptied out the hive box of the rest of the ants, then showed us the problem—the bottom board was upside down, leaving a nice little gap the ants waltzed right on through. He told us to feed the survivors sugar water, and maybe they’d make it.

Now, remember, it’s September. The last hurrah for flowers here on the East End is coming fast, to be followed by four or five months of honeybee lockdown, when there would be nothing for them to forage on, even on the rare day the temperature climbed enough to allow them to fly.

Our bees have no reserves of food, no growing babies, and food is getting scarce. And most of the hive has already starved to death. Any sane person at that point would have said, “Well, this was a sucky learning experience. We’ll try to do better next time.” And, in fact, that was one option tossed on the table. But I was already in full mama bear mode and nobody was gonna write off my bees.

My darling husband, Patrick, got as invested as I did in the plight of the bees. A kind fellow beekeeper gave us a couple of healthy frames loaded with bees, larvae and honey. We fed the hive sugar water, as instructed. Made from organic sugar. Ten pounds a week, from September until the middle of December, when it got too cold.

Then we did the only thing we could do; we waited. Snow piled up on the hive roof, temperatures stayed in the cellar. I held a glass against the hive’s wall like a stethoscope, hoping to hear some reassuring buzzing. Nothing.

Finally, spring. And God bless their teensy little bee hearts, as soon as the temperature warmed up to 50 degrees, we were awash in winter-weary bees scouting for snowdrops and crocuses. They made it!

There was rejoicing in the streets, or at least in the garage. We bought a second nuc, and commenced more intentional beekeeping. I took a course with Ray Lackey, through the Long Island Beekeepers Club, as I clearly was going to need to know a lot more if we were going to keep these babies alive. It hasn’t all been milk and honey—in fact, we got a grand total of four quarts of honey from our hives last season, which, when you figure the cost of equipment, bees, organic sugar—not to mention pain and suffering—comes out to about $200 per quart. But it’s been fun and addicting and makes me feel like we’re doing some little bit to save the planet.

Anytime I tell people I keep bees, they have questions. Way more questions than I have answers, but that just makes me want to keep learning. I’m not an expert, not by a long shot, but I’m a beekeeper, and a big fan of the whole process. I’m hoping to use a little space here every now and then to share what I’m learning, and maybe inspire one or two of you to acquire 40,000 new BFFs.