It’s been a while since I have had time to write. Why? Bees, of course! I’ll tell you about one of the days since then. My 58th birthday was APRIL 26TH.. Frank asked me how I wanted to spend my day. I said, I don’t want to feed bees, write about bees, inspect bees, move bees or dump bees. I just want to CHASE bees. So, I packed up the van and went on my first swarm call. Bees are in trees. Bees were on the ground. Bees are in a bush. Bees are in two places on one call. The end of a very long day is near, but I still have one call left. Bees were in a hot tub. This is technically NOT a swarm, but it is an extraction. I have to take apart a hole in the deck that allows me to crawl low enough to get the screws out, so that I could take the panel off and expose the bees. I set up my vacuum and felt for the feel of ‘barely sucking’, and began to vacuum the bees I could see. This was very difficult to do. Due to the fact that hot tubs, under all the pretty parts are a maze of pipes, insulation and wires and not enough space for the vacuum to reach. I worked at it for several hours and felt that I had to stop, because of the darkness that was falling. I felt that I had most probably gotten the queen in my special bee vacuum box that a friend had made me and taught me how to use it and not kill the bees. (Which is why I had never used one until now.) I left the homeowner with instructions to give me a few days to get the bees settled and see if we have the queen.

I explained that there were a few escapees that would still hang around, but that the number of them should decrease if we have the queen in my box. Oh, and you thought I was done. Not so fast. There are still all of the 5 swarm boxes that I have to go back and pick up, now that it is colder and all the forager bees have returned to their new, temporary home. I came home one tired, sore, exhausted, fulfilled, birthday girl. BTW, I got the hot tub queen!!! I named the colony Hotty.

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