How to Charm Honeybees

CHARLESTON—It’s springtime in the bee yard. In the past two weeks, I have caught three different swarms. This is a thrilling adventure, but I could not have managed without the benefit of divine help. In fact, only after bungling a job, and walking away in defeat, did I surrender the mess into God’s hands. That’s when the miracle occurred.

Tuesday, March 22, 2022—I had devoted the day to yard work and planting flowers. Around 5 p.m., exhausted and hungry, I was putting away tools and finishing up. I stumbled to the rear of my garden to toss a clump of withered leaves in my compost pile. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. I looked around. Hidden in plain sight, a swarm of honeybees hung on a seven-foot-tall flowering camellia bush.

Catching swarms requires fast action. First, I set up an empty hive box and then cut the branch holding the swarm. Next, I shook the bees into the hive box (several rounds of this occurred). I received confirmation that the queen was alive and inside the box when the rest of the bees stopped flying back to the camellia bush and moved en masse into the hive box. They followed the scent of her pheromone. (This new hive is aptly named Our Lady of the Flowers, and the queen is Camellia.)

Saturday, March 26, 2022—It was about 6 p.m. We had been away overnight. As soon as we got back, I rushed to the bee yard to check on my new hive. The bees in Our Lady of the Flowers seemed happy and settled. Relieved, I was pivoting toward the house when I heard, or perhaps felt, a strange vibration. I stopped to listen. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. I looked all around. Where was that bee chatter coming from? Finally, I craned my neck and looked up. Another swarm!! This time, the bees were clustered on the branch of a tall pecan tree. The branch, about 25 feet off the ground, hangs above my garden.

It was late in the day. I didn’t have much time to catch the bees,  or to secure help. They were bound to fly away any moment. I suited up in my protective gear. My hail-Mary strategy was to spread a tarp under the cluster, climb up a ladder with a pole and a bucket, and shake the bee cluster into the bucket. Working alone in the puffy bee suit with a veil, I was clumsy on the 12-foot standing ladder. My plan didn’t work. After getting shook up, most of the bees flew around and went right back to the tree branch.

Only a few hundred bees actually fell into the bucket or onto the tarp. Of course, too many bees were getting injured or squished. I kept up this desperate foolishness for about 30 minutes, reclimbing the ladder, whacking the tree branch, trying to collect the bees and shake them into their new home. Meanwhile, Derek, our tenant, was launching into a previously scheduled wine and cheese party, and some of his guests were enjoying the nearby patio. One invitee even ventured into my bee yard to see what I was doing. A cloud of confused bees was flying around her. I didn’t want anyone to get stung. It was time to call it quits until the next day.

Before turning to leave, I placed the interior cover over the hive box, which held several hundred dazed bees. I set aside the exterior cover, hoping to make it easier for the tree bees to perhaps find their way inside. (The interior cover has a slitted opening, but the exterior cover is a metal roof.) Then, I prayed silently for forgiveness. I suspected that I had done more harm than good. With my prayers, I transferred the bees over into God’s care. What else could I do? If I could, I would have  traveled back in time and simply left the swarm alone.

The next morning, around 8 a.m., I tramped out to the bee yard (even before my daily coffee and prayer time). It had gotten down to 49 degrees overnight, which is dangerous for exposed bees. The sun was up, but the morning air felt chilly. I suspected that stiff bee bodies would be littered across the lawn. To my surprise, about a thousand bees were still up on the branch. Working together, as bees do, they had pulled themselves  into a compact ball for warmth and survival. I peeked inside the waiting hive box; a minority of the swarm’s bees was still in there, also tightly clustered.

Yes, they were alive. But what a disaster! The hive was separated, which suggested that the queen was dead (killed by my maladroitness). The bees did not smell her pheromone, so they did not know how to reunite. I had no clue what to do next. I decided to go inside and move into my prayer chair for my morning meditation. During this time, I practiced a technique which I will call the holy release. This plea for help means essentially entrusting a situation into God’s waiting hands and asking for the highest good for all.

This process requires turning inward in silence, finding the concern in my heart, then pulling all of my emotions, wishes, and anxieties together, collecting this energetic cocktail, as you will, into an orb of feelings. Next, with  my eyes closed, I will visualize my hands reaching up and placing this burden over into the Lord’s loving care. For the transfer to be complete, I must release my fears, compulsions, plans, need to control, addendums, and any other form of attachment. I open myself to full surrender, trusting God for whatever will be his desired outcome. I must lay down the entire package, knowing that, as St. Paul says in the third chapter of Ephesians, “God can do more for us than we could ever hope for or imagine.”

He knows best. Leave it entirely with him. He will take action, in his own way, in his own time. So that’s what I did with the suffering bees, which enabled me to transition into sincere worship and prayer in his presence.

About an hour later, I returned to the back garden, expecting that the swarm would be long gone. To my shock, the bees in the pecan tree were in the process of moving down into the hive box to reunite with their sisters. Swirling from the branch, they flew like a cloud of magical creatures and went right into the slot of the interior cover. The Holy Spirit must have communicated to them that this was their best option. In watching this, I felt stunned. When we truly release ourselves into God’s hands, we invite him to take charge, and He will always respond in flawless love. Even if we have made mistakes along the way. (I have named this group the Hive of the Holy Mystery.)

After that, I thought I was good and done with swarms for the season. Until…

Tuesday, March 29,2022—It was about 11 a.m. I was trimming a strangling vine off an azalea bush next to the “Jesus Hive”, one of two established hives which had overwintered in my garden. The branches of the azalea bush were rocking back and forth as I yanked the reluctant vine tendrils. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. There it was again. Only this time, the bees sounded annoyed. There was a warning tone to their thrumming. My eyes followed the sound. There, mostly hidden by the azalea leaves and flowers, but right under my nose, was another swarm. If I had not been trimming the vine, I would have overlooked it.

I took a deep breath. Do I have the will to catch one more swarm?  I didn’t have enough equipment to set up a third empty hive box, so I pulled out a small, temporary bee box . This nuc (short for nucleus) holds a little less than half of what the bigger boxes hold. Because it’s shaped like a tall shoe box, the nuc is narrow. Dumping bees from a branch to a bucket and then into a nuc means that some bees are going to spill over and land around the box. However, after a few rounds of ferrying bees in the bucket, things looked promising. The swarm started fleeing from the azalea bush and streaming to the little nuc.

This was a rich sight to see. I plopped down to sit in the grass (fully suited up, as always) in front of the nuc and watched as hundreds of bees flew around me. The sunlight glinted off their wings. Bees don’t always fly in straight lines, they tend to zig and zag, making it appear as if they are floating specks of golden light. As honeybees surrounded me, I enjoyed the sense of being absorbed into the cluster. After about 10 minutes, I noticed something peculiar. Most of the bees were staying on the outside face and sides of the box. Some were going inside, but many were mingling and congregating on the exterior. That did not feel right. Hmmm. Where exactly was that queen?

I got up and marched back to azalea bush and checked. No bees were left there. I looked around below the bush, and the coast looked clear. I returned to the nuc and started searching systematically for the queen. Her abdomen is longer than a worker bee’s, and she is slightly larger than her daughters. The queen is distinguishable, yes, but she was also camouflaged by the crowd.

Unfortunately, I am not one of those beekeepers with a knack for spotting queens. However, suddenly there she was, in the thick of it, crawling around the façade of the nuc box. An amber beauty, plump abdomen, fully mated. It made my heart swell just to see her. She is literally the key to the survival of the entire colony.

A knot of bees guarding the entrance was blocking her from getting near the opening. I tried to get her to walk up on my glove so I could move her. This queen, however, was skittish and ran away. Soon she was lost from my sight. I calmed myself by thinking:  surely we couldn’t have come this far, only to lose the queen!

About five minutes passed. As I sat nearby and watched, the queen reappeared, like a beautiful face glimpsed in a crowded room. But before I could react, she had disappeared among the crawling bee bodies. As best I could tell, she had slipped underneath the bee box. I knew better than to lift up the nuc and cause further havoc. Patience was required while I waited. In the meantime, I could help prepare the way for her possible return. Gently, I used a pointer finger to steer the tight throng of bees away from the hole which served as a door. Some of the guard bees circled back to their post, but other bees crawled off elsewhere, momentarily opening up some space. Yet, the queen didn’t show up. Where could she be?

At this point, I decided to practice the holy release.  As previously explained, I handed all of this concern, including my racing heart, over to the Lord. Next, my eyes still closed, I sat and waited. For what? For a nudge, for clarity. And it came. In my inner being, I experienced a sense of blessed assurance, confirming that my prayer had been received. My work now was simply to relax and let it all go. (This step is crucial.)

Slowly, I opened my eyes; the throng of bees came back into focus. As if on cue, the queen crawled out from underneath the box. She was in a better position now to cut through the crowd. She made a beeline for the hole and sashayed right into the box. For some time, I sat there, just watching the bees. The queen did not pop back out but stayed inside, where she belonged. Of course, I took time to thank God and praise his Holy Name for this remarkable answer to my prayers.

Lord, I know that I operate with limited knowledge and skill; therefore, I trust my all, and even the All in All, into thy loving hands. Though a bumbler I am sometimes prone to be, may it ever please thee to keep me in alignment with thy perfect will, now and forever more. Amen.

For those curious to know more about swarms:

Swarms are Mother Nature’s design to plant new honeybee colonies around the neighborhood. When the timing is right, after the nectar flow in the spring, the queen and up to half of her worker bees fly away to a new home.  Back in the old hive, a new queen is about to hatch out. If all goes well, the new queen will mature into a healthy, capable mother who will lay thousands of eggs and keep the hive humming.

The departing swarm is rather like sailors of yore, crossing the Atlantic Ocean. The journey is not without perils. Especially in a city, where bees often move into an inappropriate spot which interferes with human activities. It’s best for everyone if a beekeeper can redirect the swarm into a hive box and add them to a designated bee yard.

However, the window of opportunity for swarm catching is limited to hours. When the bees move out of the old hive, they congregate somewhere nearby before flying off into the wild, blue yonder. You may have seen pictures of a football-shaped cluster of bees hanging from a tree, or a crawling mass of beautiful bee bodies covering someone’s car or completely obscuring a rural mailbox. These bees are only there briefly. They have placed the queen inside the  middle of their group to protect her, and they are waiting until all of the travelers have assembled. Then, several scout bees will lead the swarm to their new home. The queen emits an enchanting scent, and this pheromone allows her family to keep track of her and one another throughout the relocation process.