The Honey Bus - Meredith May Page 0,68
careful about how much honey he took from his hives so the bees had enough to eat until the flowers returned in spring. Once it got really cold, his colonies would sit out the winter, huddling together inside the hive and shivering their wing muscles to generate heat. The queen would be given the warmest spot in the nucleus, where she would slow her egg production and conserve energy. When the bees on the outermost edge of the cluster got too cold, they’d crawl inward to thaw, pushing other bees to the exterior, all the bees rotating and taking turns to keep everyone warm. It wasn’t hibernation, exactly, it was more like a slowdown, the bees venturing outside only to relieve themselves or fetch water. The colony planned ahead for this, Grandpa said, by storing large amounts of pollen and honey in the frames closest to the hive walls, where their winter pantries could serve double duty as nutrition and insulation. Grandpa knew the personality and foraging habits of each colony, and which hives could afford to spare honey, which should be left alone and which would starve if Grandpa didn’t feed them.
The hungriest hives got a sticky pollen patty Grandpa bought from the Dadant beekeeping supply catalog, made from pollen and brewer’s yeast that came in flat pancakes the color of peanut butter pressed between waxed paper. He set the patties over the tops of the brood frames where the nurse bees could devour them quickly without having to travel far. Other times Grandpa mixed equal parts water and white sugar, and fed his bees sugar syrup by pouring it into in an old mayonnaise jar, hammering holes in the lid with an awl and then inverting the jar into a wooden block he cut to slide into the hive entrance and serve as a feeder. There was a space cut into the block to allow the bees in to lick the drips that fell from the jar. His third option was to take frames of honey from abundant hives and swap them into hives with paltry honey stores.
Our mission today was to open all his hives and redistribute frames of honey from the strong hives to the weak, and if any honey was left over, we’d take it back to the honey bus for ourselves.
As we approached his bee yard, a flock of birds vaulted from the ground to broadcast our invasion in their own languages: Chickadee, Bushtit, Warbler, Blue jay. All those wings at once sounded like the flags at my school on a windy day, and I stopped for a second, just feeling the sonic power of their collective outburst. Grandpa and I watched them soar toward Garrapata Canyon. When they were out of sight, I looked to the ground to see what the birds had found so interesting.
I felt something crunch under my shoe, and discovered I was standing in the middle of a bee battlefield, the ground littered with expired drones. Some of the male bees weren’t quite yet dead, and dragged themselves in aimless circles through the carnage, toppling over every few steps on legs that were broken or lame. One pitiful drone was trying to get back into his hive, but kept getting pushed back by the bees guarding the entrance. Two bees attacked him, each one biting and pulling on a wing until the trio tumbled to the ground and continued wrestling. I watched aghast as they bit off one of his wings, and one of the guard bees airlifted the feeble drone, carrying it up and away in its clutches to unceremoniously drop it several yards away from the hive.
Grandpa must have seen the drones, but he stepped indiscriminately, smashing them underfoot as he went about the business of getting ready, lighting the smoker and putting on his bee veil, as if nothing was amiss. I tugged on his sleeve and pointed at the catastrophe on the ground. He glanced down, then handed me the smoker. I was careful to grab it by the bellows, where it wasn’t hot.
“Winter’s coming,” he said. “Not enough food to go around. Time for the ladies to kick out the men.”
Just then a wasp homed in like a jet fighter, landing its smooth, streamlined body on the back of a fuzzy drone that was struggling to stand. The wasp bit the drone’s head off in two quick moves and devoured the eyes while its headless body continued to twitch. I grimaced and asked Grandpa