Home Is Where The Cone Is

In a rare act of insect karma, the universe has gifted us a swarm of bees. You may remember that last summer, both of our hives swarmed. Twice. Broke my heart, and left us with almost no honey to harvest. This year, we were ready.We picked up a swarm cone, a contraption that looks like a big cardboard flowerpot. Apparently, wandering swarms think it looks like a swell place to call home. The swarm cone has a removable back piece that attaches to a tree. A small hole at the front of the cone lets scout bees wander in and have a look around, sort of like a realtor’s open house.

I sprinkled a little lemon-grass oil inside the cone and Charlie climbed up the ladder and screwed it onto a big oak tree in our front yard. From a real estate perspective, it was perfect: lots of sun, nicely sheltered, even a water view from that height!

Our aim was to give our own bees a place to go should they feel the need to leave home again—a place from which we could retrieve them. When I was getting ready to graduate from high school, my father attempted to sell me on staying in Fort Pierce, Florida, and going to community college. His main selling point? “If you want to live away from home, we can put a trailer in the backyard!” It didn’t work on me, but maybe the bees would fall for it.

We waited for the girls to get their knickers in a twist and swarm, but our hives were content to stay put this year. So, after a couple of weeks, we were very surprised to see bees coming and going at the entrance to the swarm cone. Be still my bee-stung heart. None of us actually believed we would lure a roving swarm.

Now all we needed to do was talk them into moving from the cone into a cozy hive box, and we’d have ourselves a free colony of bees. Ask any beekeeper, and she’ll tell you that a swarm is preferable to a purchased colony, because the swarm has successfully survived at least one winter in this climate, so its long-term chances of survival are pretty good.

I did what one does when one doesn’t know what to do—I Googled “getting bees out of a swarm cone.” There was good news and bad news. The good news is that bees LOVE the swarm cones. The bad news is there’s no easy way to get them from the cone to a hive.

Picture this. You have 10,000-20,000 honeybees in a flowerpot attached to a tree 15 feet off the ground. You need to detach the flowerpot while perched on a ladder, wearing full bee hazmat gear—hat with veil, jacket, gloves, pants tucked into socks… And you need to carry the whole mess down the ladder. Ideally, you do this without making thousands of bees really angry. The whole process would give the Flying Wallendas pause.

The first task was preparing a hive box. We used one deep box, which would become the brood chamber where the queen would do her egg laying. That box contained eight frames, some with wax already built, or drawn, to give the bees a head start and make the hive smell more like home. It’s like holding an open house with cookies baking in the oven—who wouldn’t want to live in a house that smells like fresh-baked cookies? On top of that we placed another empty box to have someplace to dump the girls.

With a ladder on either side of the trap, the men prepared to execute operation swarm recovery. Eager to avoid an onrush of excited bees, Patrick covered the entry hole with duct tape, then unscrewed the flowerpot from the tree. Carefully coordinating their moves, the guys held the swarm trap between them and descended the ladders as the buzzing inside escalated.

Looking almost like they knew what they were doing, the men made it down the ladders, held the swarm cone over the open hive, pried off the back and gave it a good shake, tumbling most of the bees into the hive. We put the cover on the hive and crossed fingers and toes, hoping they’d find the new digs to their liking.

A few hundred of the girls, perplexed by the address change, clustered on the tree, wondering where everyone had gone. But by nightfall, they found their way into the hive, and so far, it seems like our new tenants are happily turning their new hive into a home. At last check, the queen was laying eggs, pollen and nectar stores were piling up, and comb was rapidly being built out to accommodate a growing colony.

Instant karma may be more popular, but I’ll take insect karma every time.