Plain Talk: Irate Bees! (180)

Episode 180 – Plain Talk: Irate Bees!

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Jim Tew: Hello, listeners. It's Thursday again and time to talk about something to do with beekeeping. I got to tell you that out of the blue, with no warning, yesterday afternoon, late, I clearly knew what my topic would be today. That topic is irate bees, angry bees. I was completely surprised. I was completely unprepared, and all you can do is just pay the price and leave the area. Can we talk about this for a few minutes? Something's up with the bees. Something's up with the bees. I don't know what. Let's talk about it and see if the two of us, the three of us, the five of us, can come up with something. I'm Jim Tew. I come to you once a week here at Honey Bee Obscura, where we talk about anything and everything, something to do with bees every week.

Introduction: Welcome to  Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media. The producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honeybees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honeybees.

Jim: I am legendary about this grass thing. I've talked about it on this podcast. I've written probably a dozen articles. I've got PowerPoint presentations. I have a lifelong history of grass and me. As a kid, the first money that I and her friend made was cutting yards, but push mow. Anywhere from a $1.25 to 2.75 was a big job. Push mowing in the deep south, hottest blazes, and then we had to split the money, and then we usually spend it all on the way home at a local root beer stand. To this day, all these years later, I only cut grass if it really needs it, and I cut grass in bullet-straight lines because that's how all our homeowners wanted it done all those years ago.

There's that. I don't cut grass until it needs it, and by needs it I mean 10, 12 inches tall, sometimes taller, but let's don't get carried away. Yesterday on my tractor, I've got an old small Kubota. Take the loader off of it, and it's a diesel. It's just a heavy-duty, muscular, rotting tractor mower, whatever, and the grass is tall in my apiary. I'm not going to send you a picture. I'm not going to invite you over, but my apiary needs some bushwhacking. As I was cutting beside the fence, I could come up in the apiary and just turn around where a storm took out some trees. Two storms actually took out two trees several years ago, and I didn't pay to have the stumps ground. They just let them fall back in the stump holes and stuff. For what it looks like with all the brush and weeds growing around those stumps. I tried to knock that down because I'm with the tractor deck raised all the way up, I'm minding my own business. I'm 20 yards, I'm 25 yards, I'm 30 yards from the closest beehive, and I thought that a multiflora rose had grabbed my shirt because I kept feeling a prickly feeling on the cuff of my short-sleeved t-shirt so I'm expecting to see a briar having caught me, I looked down to see a bee attacking me.

Well, I've done this for decades and decades and then some more decades, but that was surprising. I was not that close. I had not opened those colonies, and I don't want to confess too much here, but I haven't opened them in a couple of weeks. They haven't needed to be opened. I've done nothing. The bees have not been disturbed. Why is this bee coming this far to attack me on this tractor? While I was having that thought, and of course I sent her to bee heaven, and while I was having that thought, suddenly there was a bee right in my face buzzing, buzzing, buzzing, and then there was another bee picking up around my hearing aids.

I could hear the bee over the den of the tractor. All right. I'm an experienced beekeeper and I am not prepared for this. If there's three I can see, I don't know how many are there are that I cannot see. Did I run over a swarm or something? No, I didn't. While I was beginning to accept my situation I suddenly had one right at the base of my nose. It's just an instant. It'll take me 50 times longer to tell you this, and it takes me to response to it. I knew immediately what was going to happen if I didn't get that bee. Don't let the tractor go crazy at 3,000 RPMs and three blades turning on an incline around a stump.

Don't get distracted with this bee attacking you. I went for her. I crushed her but not before she got me right up in the edge of my nose, and then you snort and blow and it hurts, and the whole time you keep the tractor going away from it. Now, experienced beekeeper, this is where I am. Some of those bees, two or three of them followed me 60, maybe 70 yards. In fact, I considered not going down to my house because my wife was there and neighbors and civilization. I'm thinking, how many bees of this irate nature am I taking down there?

I'm dragging this story out. I don't know why they did that. They're early. I've always said, and others have said, that when the dearth comes up, the bees really change their temperament. Probably the 1st of July, hot summer, dry, nothing in bloom, big four bee populations, everybody unemployed, and at that time the bees personality changes. Is there more to the story than that, listeners? Because this, I must say the date, this is May 17th that this happened, and that's a far cry from July, and it's raining and it's been a reasonably good year.

As I was pondering this, because I have written literally hours on this, I have neighbors who cut their grass. I've had my bees attack my neighbor. He's now departed this dimension, and he was very stoic about it. He was good about it. He was, I guess this is the wrong way to word it, but he was a man's man, so he was okay with it. He actually came over and helped me hive swarms, but his wife, who has now taken over since he's gone, he's gone in the big way. She's taken over all the grass-cutting. She will not tolerate it well. I need to know what's going on back there. While we think about it, let's take a break and hear from our sponsor.

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Jim: Listeners, I've been down this path before, and I don't want to make this a big thing about bees eating us up, attacking, stinging, bee being brave, me being tough. I don't want anything like that. I want to know why these bees are doing this. One working hypothesis that I'm dealing with is that there is no nectar flow on right now, to speak up. We're between clover and fruit bloom is over, in the midwest here. In general, I know that listeners are all over the place. Do you find that the bees' temperament changes in the segments between flowering periods and the spring nectar flow time? Do I have unemployed, experienced foragers back at home who would normally be out foraging, but there's nothing out there. The dancers have not come back with any information, so statistically am I just more inclined to come across more experienced bees who readily know the community, who readily find their way about and who really don't want you being in that yard, but why don't they want me being in the yard I wasn't doing anything with them. Others and I have said, well, it's the vibrations of them all. Is it really? Is that what it is? Well, it's the odor of the exhaust. Well, help me understand that.

There's 50, 60, 70,000 bees in this three-deep hive body box, and 20 of them are deeply offended by these diesel fumes 20 yards away. I mean, heaven forbid why aren't there clouds of bees out there? Why did just a few select bees respond to this stimulus? Or am I completely barking up the wrong tree? Would it be more toward the fact that the bees are arguing with each other? Because I've told you and others have told me, and we've talked about it, that an apiary is not a natural bee situation. The hives are remarkably too close together, too jammed in, too close.

Do I hyperexpress some characteristics when the bees are antagonizing each other because they're going to rob, first chance they're going to get they're going to rob each other. If there's no flow on right now are those experienced foragers are they nosing around their neighbor's hives, and are they setting each other's defensive systems off? Then do I come along as an unusual disturbance? Any disturbance anywhere anytime seems to elicit a response. I've been through this before listeners over and over again, over and over and over again with neighbors and I don't know how to deal with it, and I don't want to make an issue of it, but bees do sting.

Yes, I try and others try to play it down, and you can wear protective clothes. You're going to become accustomed to it. Indeed I have no after-effects of the sting on my nose yesterday, and that's not because I'm a tough guy, but I think it's just because of years of being stung. I knock on wood, I don't swell the way I did in the earliest days. I'm struggling trying to figure out why the bees are reacting this way. You see, as I've said I've been down this path before. I picked up a swarm several years ago and within just five, six weeks of that swarm being in my apiary there I couldn't even go in that yard.

If you want to go back with a cup of coffee and you want on a nice spring morning and you want to stand there and contemplate and do some mindfulness as you sip your morning coffee those bees are going to have no part of that then, they were right in my face already. I gave them the name sentinel bees because they were unintentionally guarding the entire yard so I thought that if these irate bees are just coming from one colony, then that entire colony is protecting the entire yard, and I named them sentinel bees. We might talk about this again sometime. I had to move them because my neighbor really made me explore my own values and morals. I was casually chatting with him. This is before he passed and he said, "Boy, this is a bad year for yellowjackets because I've been stung five or six times already."

Well, listeners it was so early in the spring, it was back late mid-April, late April, there's no yellowjacket workers already out. Queens are still founding nest in the ground somewhere or empty tree bowls or something. I knew right away that he's being stung by my bees. I've struggled with this question. I probably used it in podcasts. I've used it in articles and talks. When is not telling all the truth a lie because you think, "Well, you just let this guy believe that yellowjackets are coming for him." I couldn't do that to him. I told him it was my bees, and then I need to stop this. I don't have enough time. He said, "What are you going do?" I need to rush this story. You got to pick out a colony. Is it coming from one colony or multiple colonies? I'll have to kill that colony. It was an impossible situation to deal with. Not impossible, but just trying, because I thought, what if it kill the wrong one? Then you sent the wrong bees to the hereafter.

I spent a lot of time and I finally decided it was coming from that swarm and it was a big hive by now it was three deeps and a super of two and you think by the time I find that queen, replace her, that's going to really agitate those bees. They're going to really be stinging everything, so I've got to move the whole operation. I picked up a really difficult clumsy move. I moved I think it was three deeps and two supers together. You use [unintelligible 00:15:23] on the side. I got to stop this story. I had to get it out. I didn't want to do this again listeners. I really hope that some of the swarms that have moved in this year-- I picked up two swarms, two volunteer swarms, and now I'm wondering, are these swarms more defensive? Is this a reason that I've never really said before for keeping improved queen stock in colonies, because they have been selected to a degree for gentleness? Because if this is going to be a testy swarm back there again I really don't want to have to keep going through this.

I love picking up swarms, but now I'm wondering if, in fact, they really are worth being free bees. Is this just a weather thing? They've been okay so far. I'd walk back there and have a look. I haven't really mowed, but a couple of times I'm not around them that much. I'm at a stage in life and in my beekeeping that I don't feel a need to open these bees constantly, so it's an unusual occasion. It's even rare. There's a reason that the colonies should be opened or I don't open them. Controlling varroa, adding supers, reversing deeps or something like that is the only reason that I would go out there.

I don't know why they're doing this. I cannot have them attacking my neighbors. Neighbor on one side cuts her grass a lot, neighbor on the other side yes, it's true she physically carries an EpiPen and she did that before she became my new neighbor about three to five years ago, so I don't know what's up. I just say the things I've taught the things I've written about the things, I've tried to sound authoritative. Well, the bees are responding to the exhaust. The bees are responding to the vibrations. The bees are responding to your exhaled breath. I don't know what they're responding to. I've said the same thing others have said, but yesterday it just didn't look like that that was what was triggering those bees.

I'm going to think about this for a while. I was going to talk with you and see if you have any notions. Is it the cessation of a nectar flow? Is it a response to robbing behavior inside my small apiary? I've only got five colonies back there. Is it truly vibrations and odors that are really annoying? Some select few not just a little bit, but enough to follow me literally 65 to 70 yards. I want to say that again. They did not drop right back. These were feisty bees. I went back an hour later, one lone bee still wanted some of me. I thought I'd talk to you about it because this is a fairly well-worn path for me and I just don't want to have to deal with hot feisty bees back there again. I just want small happy bees that are appreciative for the nests that I've given them and for the care that I give them for their health and let's just get along and play together nicely. I don't know where this is going. We may talk about it again sometime, but right now I'm struggling, considering, exploring, wondering if I should take that tractor right back there and do this again to see if they'll do it again so I can talk to at least my one neighbor with the tractor that she might want to be alert. That doesn't make for good beekeeping neighbors does it? All right. Let's talk again next week. Thank you so much for being here. This is Jim telling you bye.

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