It’s been a crazy year for the bees.

Unlike what most people might think, our problem was too many bees. There were honeybees, bumble bees, various wasps and yellow jackets all over the raspberries and other plants.

I’m used to them, but it was at the point where the boys didn’t want to harvest. I truly have never seen so many.

Too Many Bees

As for honeybees, this summer was definitely a wild ride. A friend who has a hive nearby had a tough time with them swarming a couple of times. My husband went over to give him a hand wrangling them, and when they inspected the hive there were over a half dozen queen cells and a couple of newly hatched queens ready to raise a ruckus. That explains why the hive continued to swarm.

Our hives had their own issues. They did so well for most of the summer. During one August check Grant thought we would have close to 350 lbs. of honey with one hive excelling more than anything we’ve had on the east side of the mountains. We were fairly giddy with anticipation, and even planned to have another homeschool demonstration on how to spin honey. Then the unthinkable happened. 

Bees Gone Wild

The lady who lives on the farm where we keep them sent me a note to let me know they were acting different. She was used to have them in garden buzzing around, but these were going haywire. They were all over the place and more aggressive. She kept the kids inside all morning. (Although, I have to add a side note on the situation that turned out for the best. We had considerable wind that day, and a large tree came down in the family’s yard. If the kids hadn’t stayed inside, someone might have been injured.)

When Grant got over there to check on them he couldn’t believe it. He said it was a literal feeding frenzy. The largest hive was in the middle of swarming and taking all of the honey with them. Grant estimated they took 200 lbs. of honey in the 15 hours since he was there the night before. Even veteran beekeepers I spoke with have never heard of such a thing.

A Sweet Ending

Grant has a special hive body that he can hook up to the Shop-Vac so he can suck up bees when he’s removing honey supers or rescuing a swarmed hive. In an attempt to save what honey he could, he gathered as many bees as he could and brought them home.

I was so disgusted at this point from all of the trouble we’ve had with the bees that I recommended throwing the box in the river, but he reminded me there was probably 40 lbs. of honey in their stomachs. He kept them at our house for several days, then put them back in the former hive where they stayed for the rest of the season.

Honeybees are funny little critters. When they’re happy and hardworking everything works out great. When something gets under their bonnet – and we have no idea what inspired the big swarm – it’s pretty hard to talk them out of their decision to leave. We still don’t know where they went. We figure they had to have gone to an abandoned hive somewhere fairly close because it takes 8 pounds of honey to make a pound of beeswax, which they’d have to create in order to build the honeycomb. But it’s a mystery whether they found an old hive body or one of the big old cottonwood trees in the area. It’ll be interesting if we ever find them.