04/10/2021
Today we picked up our nuc of honeybees for this year, which we fully expected to be a replacement hive for the highly dis-functional nuc we picked up last year.
Last year, between Covid, which pushed back the delivery date to late May, and then a late delivery truck that kept us waiting for hours on delivery day...
Ok, point of clarification; ordering honeybees is nothing like ordering pizza or groceries on Instacart. You order them months in advance and you are given a date with a particular window of time.
Refunds?
Well, you can try but this process involves living organisms that could care less about your particular problems.
So last year we waited for hours to pick up our bees which, due to Covid were already too late for our apple, plumb and pear blossoms. They were already way behind the survival curve.
Fortunately, blackberries and dandelions filled in the gap over summer.
Then the fires hit. One reason smokers are used on bees is because they cause them to retreat to their honey stores. Smoke does not really calm bees in as much as it triggers a survival mode; and they gorge themselves on the honey in case they need to move. We actually did a similar thing stuffing our trailer because of a fire just a few miles away.
When the smoke had finally past we inspected that hive only to have our hearts sink. Frame after frame, the honey stores were decimated and there seemed to be no sign of brood. Not only was there no honey for us, the hive seemed to be a forgone conclusion as doomed going into winter.
Still, we kept feeding them with syrup and pollen cakes. At first as a gesture of mercy and later a gesture of hope.
I’m naming them “the little hive that could” because against everything 2020 had to dish out they survived for this year’s apple blossoms.
And this year our new order of honeybees was right on time, and the truck apparently was too, because there was no waiting to load our box (nuc) of 20,000 bees into my SUV.
It’s a little cold so it was an easy drive. The girls were not eager to come out and buzz along my windshield.
Looking forward to a better year, for the bees, and all of us.
