Bee Rescue, Day 2

After a good nights rest, I got up early to go to the Farmer's Market and check on the bees. Apparently, the only way to convince a group of bees to stay in a new box is to ensure that the queen is in the box. We had failed to get the queen. The outside wall of the garage was covered in bees. And the neighbors were hot (this is a condo). They wanted the "research project" stopped immediately and the bees disposed of. Only one person was interested in what we were doing.

Ernie went to the bee supply store for advice on how to proceed and was loaned a wet-vac and a special box to connect to it. We spent the next 5 hours vacuuming bees into the box and then emptying them into the hive box. Fortunately, we were able to get the queen early on so we didn't have to keep vacuuming up bees we had already captured and moved. But many of those that were displaced during the vacuuming, headed for the comb we had dislodged the night before. The old saying "busy as a bee" is based on truth, these bees never stopped. They remained focused on their job even when they were drowning in honey.

Yep, drowning in honey. We had put too much comb in the new hive the night before and the honey had leaked out and was pooling up under the cart the hive box was setting on. The bees in the lower box literally drowned as the honey leaked down. So we had to empty the box of all those poor little carcasses and throw out about half of the comb.

As soon as we got it cleaned out, the bees we had vacuumed up and emptied into the hive box started acting much happier. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any pictures of the vacuuming or the happy hive due to having so much honey on my hands, in my hair, on my clothes, and all over my shoes. The next pictorial installment of the story will have to wait until the bees get to my house and start helping me garden.