A Gentler Hiving Method

Four years ago, I had my first experience hiving bees. I was nervous, of course, despite all I had read about the non-aggressive nature of new packages. With no queen, brood or hive to protect, we were told the bees wouldn’t have reason to sting.

I now know that this is true, but I didn’t back then, and neither did the post office worker who called us at 6:30 in the morning.

“Your bees are in. You’ll be here when we open, right?”

I arrived at the demanded hour and peered over the counter. I could hear my girls singing in the back room. The post woman did the willies dance and called to a man in back. He emerged holding a humming package as though it contained enriched uranium. On his hands were leather gloves that went to his elbows.

Because of an odd living arrangement at the time, I had to pick the bees up sixty miles from my home. The further I drove, the louder the bees protested. By the time I arrived, I felt like I had driven into a Hitchcock film – the kind where hordes of evil winged creatures get entangled into the hair of screaming blondes.

I ran into the house to grab the prepared squirt bottle. Not to nail them, as one might squirt a cat discovered on the counter, but to placate them with a prepared sugar solution. I’d read that in the Dummies Guide.

The effect was immediate. In a moment their irritated ZZZZZZZZZ became a sugar-induced mmmmm. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Sugar has the same effect on everyone.

We had assembled our equipment days before and put together a tool box of bee paraphernalia. The trusty Dummies Guide was dog eared on the page of step by step instructions, so when my husband Jeff came home that evening we were ready to go.

It was somewhere between steps seven and nine of the Dummies Guide that I became skeptical. The book not only forbade us to use gloves, it recommended sharply jarring the package after spritzing the bees with sugar water. Even I could see the sugar was being used as a bribe. I thought about how ludicrous it was. Put in human terms, it would be like eating a glazed doughnut from the Four Mile Bakery, only to be interrupted by an earthquake.

The next step after “jar” was to dump the bees into the hive and vigorously shake the box from side to side. Jar. Dump. Shake. These are not words we associate with gentleness. They are abrupt, violent words that seem counter-intuitive when dealing with some ten thousand creatures armed with barbed, venomous lances.

Turns out, even when coated with sugar syrup, bees indeed do not appreciate being jarred, dumped and shaken. Bees were everywhere. Some were in the hive. Most were clouding the air. Our new white suits were bespeckled with disoriented insects.

I took a moment to reflect on how wrong it seemed. Only part of the bees were in the hive. The rest were … well… everywhere else.

I was convinced that we must be unwittingly involved in some barbaric hazing ritual of the Fraternal Order of Beekeepers. Even the Dummies Guide was in on it. Once we were properly attacked, the real method would surely be revealed to us by our mentors over plenty of laughs and shot glasses of liquid antihistamine.

“Put the cover on,” Jeff suggested.

But how were the bees to find their way back? How would they scent it? The queen had not been accepted yet, so her pheromones were unfamiliar. And even if they recognized her pheromones, would they care? She wasn’t their real queen. They didn’t have to listen to her.

Remarkably, we survived that first hiving ordeal. And the second, third and fourth. They all went the same way, with bees flying everywhere. For four years, I remained skeptical about the jar, dump and shake method. It all seemed unnecessarily rough and disorienting. But I was a newbie and was raised to respect the advice of my betters.

A friend, Tom, received his bees two days after mine this spring. Another friend, Kelli, was visiting from out of state and I invited her to observe Tom hiving his bees. I swaggered up with my bee suit in hand, overflowing with competence and knowhow. I was ready to jar, dump and shake.

“We’re not dumping them this time,” Tom said.

“What?”

“It’s a new technique.”

Tom had gotten his bees from Tony Rimkus (www.olddrone.net). He filled me in on the new drill. It was simple. After spraying and jarring the package, we were to remove the lid, syrup tin and queen cage. After placing the queen , we gently overturned the package so the bees could crawl out onto the frames. Tony had figured out a way to eliminate dump and shake!

With the package still on the frames, we added an empty super, the top feeder, and the outer cover. The bees were in the hive. They were most notably not swarming in the air, or covering our bee suits. There was so little fuss, that I worried if Kelli had been properly initiated. It had all been so easy.

We noticed a few of the bees had found their way through the entrance reducer. They were scenting the entrance.

It’s taken four years, but I finally feel like a beekeeper. Never mind that I didn’t have the courage myself to stray from the jar, dump and shake method on my own. It was the validation of my hunch, by one of Ohio’s foremost beekeepers, that made me feel I was finally allowed to have an opinion. After all, aren’t beekeepers fond of saying, “If you have ten beekeepers, you’ll have twenty different opinions.”?

Next time I’m following my instincts. And we can all celebrate over shots of cherry Benadryl later.