(Un?)Natural Beekeeping

It was a crisp fall evening here in Kentucky when my 12 year-old daughter Ruth and I took a large pot of sugar syrup out to the hives to feed the bees. Ideally in natural beekeeping, the bees would never be fed anything but honey or honey-water from their own apiary, but a weak fall nectar flow had created a crisis: feed the bees or lose them to starvation over the winter.

Neither Ruth nor I wore a veil or gloves, since the Warré fall feeder we'd built allowed us to feed without disturbing the bees or losing any warmth or scent from the hive. (Post soon to come on how to build one.) We filled the feeder, and spent a few minutes enjoying watching the bees through the feeder window. Then Abie, our 16 year-old, called from the barn that she needed some help. I put the pot, still sticky with syrup, on the hood of our old, battered, green farm truck, and trotted off.

Some time later as we were headed back up to the house, Ruthie remembered the pot and ran to get it. As she picked it up and looked inside she exclaimed, "Oh, no! There are tons of bees in here." Well, "tons" turned out to be around 15 or so bees hopelessly caught in about an eighth of an inch of sticky syrup at the bottom.

"We should never have left it out here! Oh, the poor things," Ruth said. I agreed that we'd been negligent, but I explained how hard it would be to free them without tearing their wings or even leaving behind a leg or two.

"But can't I try?"

"Of course you can try. We always try."

Ruth managed to free a couple of the least mired bees and transfer them to the landing board of one of the hives, but she saw that it wasn't going to work with the others, and it was already getting dark. That's how we ended up with bees in the kitchen.

Ruthie decided that the only way to get the bees out without hurting them was to offer them something to hold onto while they pulled themselves free. A stick or a finger worked nicely. When I came to check on the progress of her rescue project, there were several bees on the windowsill cleaning themselves and one another, and a few still awaiting Ruthie's aid in the pot. With delighted eyes she told me, "One was licking syrup off my finger! I could actually see its tongue, and feel it! Oh, so cool!"

Half an hour later, Ruth informed me that she'd put the bees "to bed" in a couple of aluminum bread pans, "except for three rowdy ones who don't want to go to bed." The "rowdy ones" were busily inspecting the blossoms of the geranium in the kitchen window and buzzing about. So most of the bees spent the night in a newspaper-lined bread pan on the counter, with the others free to roam.

The next morning our "rowdies" were flying against the window glass, obviously anxious to be about foraging as usual. It was a little cool, but the sun was shining and warm spots were available, so we opened the window and off they flew. The bees in the pan got to wait (and chew newspaper) until it was a bit warmer. Then Ruthie took them outside and released them. They were happy to be back to life as usual, and Ruth was happy to have righted our wrong and saved a few bees.

Considering that some of the tenets of natural beekeeping are to "let the bees be bees," always tending to what is natural to them, to give them housing resembling their natural homes, and to intervene as little as possible, this was a very un-natural episode in our beekeeping journey. But then again, what is more natural than being fascinated by, respecting, and loving these amazing little creatures?