I got a call from Mary, a friend and neighbor over in Stanfordville. It seems a friend of hers had a swarm that was in a tree and she wanted to know if I could help. I love to hive swarms, they are kind of a free gift from nature but they have to be hived no later than June because otherwise they wont have time to build up their honey stores for the winter if they only rebuild in July or August. They say a swarm in July is not worth a fly.
Well my first reaction was that it was really Mary who had the bees because she was a little mysterious about where the bees were . It was a little like the guy who goes to the psychiatrist and says, my brother has a problem, can I discuss it with you?
But I sent Mary an email with a few questions and it turns out that it wasn’t a swarm but a nest that had made it’s home in a tree near “this woman’s” house. And I was wrong, it was a friend of Mary’s named Pam. But anyway, the bees had been there all summer. I told Mary that it was very difficult to save a nest that was well developed. I could come over and “remove” – read “kill” – the nest but my advice was to wait until the winter and the bees would probably not survive. Even if they did it would be easy in the early spring to remove them.
Bee trees were very common up to about 10 years ago when two types of mites infected the bees and without treating, which is done to domesticated hives, bees don’t survive well in the wild. Bees used to be real easy to keep. But in addition to the mites they are subject to bear attacks and more commonly CCD, Colony Collapse Disorder, which hasn’t affected my bees but is common for professional migratory beekeepers. Ballard’s bees up in Roxbury, on the other side of the Catskills where I buy my bottles, used to have 2000 colonies, they are down to 700 now.
But anyway the report on my bees is not good. If you recall the bear got into my bees and really destroyed most of them. I was able to save two colonies and while they are still alive and buzzing around, only one of the colonies looks strong enough to have a reasonable amount of honey to harvest. This means that in a good year I might get 200 pounds and this year if I am lucky I may have only 20-30 pounds. Maybe I should look at it like the drought in Texas where the result is a loss of cattle but the price goes way up. So those of you who usually receive honey from me… if you get none, you will know why and if you do get a bottle as a present you will know how valuable it is!
The Millbrook Times 