I took the beginning bee keeper’s class in the spring of 2022, but I decided not to keep my own beehives that year. I wanted to give myself a year to check out other bee keepers’ practices, to plan for hives on our son’s farm, and to make sure that I was ready to assume responsibility for the care of bees. By the spring of 2023, however, I was ready and in early February I placed my order for two nuclear colonies, which consist of five frames of bees with a queen. The bees arrived in early April and I transferred them into the hives that I had purchased and prepared for them. The spring and summer were amazing. The bees thrived in their adopted location. The farm is rich with an orchard, a lot of flowers, and a host of bee attractive plants such as lavender. The pasture was filled with bee-friendly flowers last year. The bees quickly multiplied and filled their hives including producing sufficient extra honey for a successful harvest in the fall.

Along the way, he bees taught me a lot, starting with lessons in patience. I quickly learned that one of the best ways to work around the bees is to move slowly. When the bees are not surprised by sudden actions they are remarkably calm. When they get agitated, it can be intense to be around them even when I am wearing a bee suit that protects me from stings. After a few practices and a few mistakes, I learned to adjust the individual boxes in the hives, make inspections to check the health of the hive, install queen excluders to section of areas of the hive for honey without any brood cells, and perform other tasks. Over the course of the season, I was stung only twice and both times were my fault. The first time, I neglected to tie off my pants legs. When a bee wandered up my pants leg instead of calmly providing an escape for the bee, I tried to brush it down my leg towards my shoe. The motion alarmed the bee, which caused it to go into a defensive mode and it stung. It didn’t take me long to walk away from the hives to a private place where I could remove my pants, pull out the stinger, and apply a baking soda compress to soothe the area.

The second sting came when I was working bees without any protective clothing. A bee became entangled in my beard. I should have simply walked away from the hives and calmly waited for the bee to clear itself from the entanglement. Instead, I tried to remove the bee with a bee brush and when the brush pushed it against my beard it became alarmed and stung. The stinger didn’t lodge and my face was a bit tender for a couple of days, but otherwise it wasn’t much of a problem for me.

Traditional bee keepers use smoke to deal with bees. In the wild, bees are alarmed by smoke, which is a signal of forest fires which are a threat to bee colonies which generally are lodged in the hollows of trees, often in areas that have preciously served as bird nesting areas. When there is smoke, the bees that are outside of the hive rush into the hive to protect the queen, literally offering their bodies as insulation to protect her and the brood stock at the center of the hive. When bee keepers use smoke, the bees will rush into the hive or cluster around a queen if the queen is outside of a hive during a swarming event.

Although I own a smoker, I have learned that smoke isn’t really necessary for my style of working with the bees.

Mind you, I am still a novice. Although the bees in our colonies have done well and survived weeks of cold weather, including some record cold days and a season of very few days that are warm enough for them to leave the hive and food is scarce, the colonies are down well and the bees are active and healthy. However, I haven’t even been responsible for bees for an entire year. And I have already ordered two more nucs to expand to four colonies this year. I have also built my own bee boxes for the new colonies and have switched form the traditional Langstroth hives of my first colonies to Warre hives for the new bees. If the year goes as I hope, I will switch the first colonies to Warre hives in the spring of 2025. I don’t expect to expand the apiary beyond four colonies. I don’t want to displace any of the wild native pollinators on the farm, I don’t want to increase the risk of parasites and diseases in the colonies by keeping too many bees too close together, and caring for the bees is a hobby, so I don’t want to generate too much work. Switching to the Warre hives is inspired in part by a style of bee keeping that is less dependent on intervention and inspection by the bee keeper.

I no longer think of myself as a bee keeper. I’m not keeping anything. The bees are pretty much independent beings from whom I steal a bit of honey each year. In exchange, I provide water for them, give them food during the cold seasons, and inspect the hives for signs of parasites and illnesses.

I also have slowed my use of bee colonies as metaphors for anything. Human politics and government are vastly different than bee colonies so those who use bee hives as metaphors for politics and government demonstrate their ignorance of how bee colonies are organized. Unlike politics, bee colonies have a very limited roll for males in a system where females do virtually all of the work from nurturing larvae to foraging for food to serving as guards and protectors of the hive to construction of new cells and storing of honey.

Mostly I am grateful for the experience of observing the bees. Nurturing patience and learning to move a bit slowly are skills that I need in increasing quantities as I grow older. Having a few bee boxes to build over the winter and working to seal them with tongue oil over a few weeks in the spring is a creative task that keeps me engaged. Waiting for the new bees to arrive is something to anticipate along with waiting for warmer weather and blooming plants. A healthy supply of honey in the pantry is an added bonus. A teaspoon of honey in my tea each morning sweetens my day and improves my attitude.

Yesterday I wrote my check for the annual registration of my apiary with the Washington State Department of Agriculture and the process once again stirred my thoughts of the year to come. With any luck this will become an annual tradition for me for many more years.