Honeybee Tales. . .

Years ago a friend at work gave me my first bee hives.  I had always been interested in beekeeping, and when I found out that he, Milt Fair, had bee hives I was so intrigued.  I asked him so many questions, and began reading everything I could find about them.

Sometime later he offered to give me a couple of beehives.  I lived in a residential neighborhood, north of Mishawaka.  We had a large 1¼ acre lot.  I chose a spot toward the back of the lot in a little grove of wild cherry trees in which to put the hives.

My next door neighbor at the time,  was an older man, probably my age now.  He had an above ground swimming pool behind his house.  One day he came over and complained to me that my bees were landing on the swimming pool ladder, and his grandkids were getting stung.

I told him that I thought that was unlikely, as I had a large oval shaped galvanized tub, filled with water right outside my hives, with bark floating on top for my bees to get their water, and I didn't think that they would be flying the 100 yards or so to his pool to get water, when they had it so close.

He kind of skeptically rolled his eyes, seeing my beehives and figuring that every bee in the neighborhood must belong to me.  I kind of cockily told him, that I would come over and find out where those bees  were coming from.

Bees do indeed make a bee-line when flying to the hive after gathering water or full of nectar, so I went over to his house that afternoon, and watched a bee as it left his ladder and flew away.

I lived directly east of him, and this bee flew to the southwest.  I followed it until I lost sight of it, and then waited for another, followed it. . . repeating this process, not too long until I came to a large vacant overgrown field behind his house, and hidden in the tall weeds was, what I can only describe as a bee ghetto.  There were dozens and dozens (over 200 as we later discovered) of beehives and terrible states of disrepair, many toppled over on their sides laying hidden in the tall weeds.

I went and got my neighbor,  (probably a bit obnoxiously) brought him back to show him.  His eyes got about the size of coffee saucers, when he saw all those bee hives.

In those days, not sure if it is still the case, there was an Indiana  state bee inspector.  You had to have your hives inspected every year or two for various diseases, etc.   I called her, and she came out and ended up burning about 200 of those hives, if I remember correctly, as she found they had a disease, European foulbrood.

She had been looking for this fellow's hives for years, as he never had them inspected.  The disease doesn't effect humans, but it is transmitted by infected honey.  Bees will rob a weak or dying hive, and carry the infected honey back to their home hive and thereby infect it.  

My bees ended up also getting the disease.  The spores of it are infectious for decades.  The only surefire remedy is to destroy all your equipment, kill your bees and start over, or you can treat your hives with antibiotics from that point forward, and both of those options were more than I wanted to do.  I just wanted a simple little hobby, not get into it in such an involved way, so I destroyed my bee hives, and got away from it.

I did get into beekeeping again years later.  Beekeeping was one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done.  They are such fascinating creatures, and in the spring and early summer, when the honey flow is heavy, when you open the hive. . . it takes roughly 6 million flowers to make a pound of honey. . . One hive body will hold maybe 75 lbs of honey, and each hive can have 3 or more hive bodies.  the aroma that arises from within the hive, is so intense and beautiful. . . beyond my words to describe. . . 

Anyway. . . memories from years gone by. . . 

Thank you Lord for Your wondrous creation of bees. . .

 ❤

Dave See less