ony kept calling me Marsha. “Look over here, Marsha,” he beckoned. My attention was fixed on the activity going on above my head so I didn’t look over until he called again. Then it dawned on me—he thought I was Marsha. I understood the mistake. Although he’d helped me dress just a few minutes ago, he didn’t know me. We’d just met the night before. I turned on the ladder where I balanced seven feet up underneath a white pine. I looked down. The wind blew slightly, cool and crisp, typical for a April morning in front range Colorado.
A few feet above my head hummed a swarm of five thou- sand bees.
I smiled down at Tony, even though it wouldn’t show, from behind the veil. Tony took my picture.
* * *
I’ve always liked insects, and bees are a favorite—they’re attractive, industrious and socially complex, they live in
amazing hive-cities, and they create one of nature’s most perfect, delicious foods. While I’m not a beekeeper yet, my curiosity and obsession with gardening has been leading me in that direction. Just the spring before, for fun and education, I’d attended a Beginning Beekeeping class, held by the Pikes Peak Beekeepers Association. The two days of instruction covered everything from bee anatomy to honey extraction, but what really made my antennae stand up was the session on swarm capture. From what I learned, capturing a swarm of bees was a profitable, nearly risk-free venture--and as easy as stealing candy from a baby.
* * * A jolly, bearded, ursine man by the name of Mike presented the session.
“The primary reason swarming occurs is overcrowding,” he said. “To keep the hive healthy and to increase their population elsewhere, they divide.”
He went on to explain that they begin the process by producing a new queen for the existing hive. The nurse bees feed a few of the larvae royal jelly, the larvae grow and then soon enter their final metamorphic stage into adulthood. The first queen bee who hatches from this metamorphic stage usually wins, by dispatching of her still- pupating rivals; in fact, a queen’s stinger is used only for that purpose. But even before this, the old queen, who first had food withheld from her so she’d stop laying eggs, and then was further harassed by her hive-mates so she’d get down to a trim flying weight, has left with at least half of the hive.
Since it can take several days to find a location for a hive and settle in, the departing bees gorge themselves on honey. They’re so stuffed their bodies are taut, making it nigh-impossible for them to curve around and sting. The binge also renders them docile. Usually the swarm will land within one to two hundred feet of the old hive, and they’ll hang on a tree or shrub branch together, with the queen protected near the middle, while scout bees make a final decision on their hive location. During a warm period, they release and fly together to the new digs. While the entire process can stretch out over a period of several weeks, the swarming itself usually occurs during a single day. “All you really need for a capture, if the swarm is in a convenient place, is a couple of cardboard boxes with
Winter/Spring 2012
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