Our beekeeping came to an abrupt halt in late winter when we realized every honeybee was dead.   We were able to extract the honey left in the hives and we did that.   We cleaned the boxes (supers) for all eight hives as best we could and stored them in Mike’s shop.    We’ve since re-established three hives, but that left a lot of bee “houses” and supplies down in the shop.  Even though we froze the frames to kill wax moths, we’ve still had moth activity destroying a portion of the stored combs. This week, Gerald and Mike pulled everything out to determine what to keep and what to destroy.

There was still residual honey in the boxes, and they set them out on the porch of the shop thinking our honeybees might discover and clean them.   Honeybees are really good at finding honey. Mike said that within just a few minutes, there were six or seven bees investigating.  Within 60 minutes, there were hundreds…maybe over a thousand…honeybees working to get that honey residue out of the boxes, fighting with each other over who the honey belonged to, and warning Mike and Gerald to get away while honey work was going on. Honeybees are very effective in their warning skills. Mike and Gerald left the shop as quickly as the bees showed up.

Mike could not enter the shop all day  yesterday.  The bees were like gladiators. This morning, he told me that since these were my bees, I could suit up and go down to the shop and move the bee boxes away from the door so that he could get in.   He was right, but I was so irked. I didn’t want to get out of bed.

Mike went out and called out for me to come outside.  I was in my pajamas and barefoot.  Very annoyed at him. And then God intervened, and my day just changed completely.

Here’s what I saw when I went outside…the picture does not do it justice.

Look at Clinch Mountain rolling up there in the background…

Whew..what can I say?

And just like that…it was over.     I was down at the shop and even though it was early, a few hard-working honeybees were already there…maybe 50-60.    I picked the boxes up and moved them away from the door.  The bees didn’t mind.  I was humming…they were humming.

It was all good. Did you see the pink sky? Did your mood lighten?