The Hive Beside His Garden

The survivor did not care what had happened to its sisters. It was the strongest colony I had, which is probably why the skid steer only clipped it. Bees that strong pile up in the front of the hive, and whoever was driving must have swerved.

Over the next ten days it boiled over. I added a box, and they filled it. The foragers coming back across the hay ground were loaded with clover pollen, orange and yellow on their legs.

By the second week of June the colony was crowded enough that I started seeing queen cups along the bottom bars. That is the bees thinking about swarming. In Iowa in June, that is also the best time there is to make a split.

A split is simple to describe and fussy to do. You take frames of brood, eggs, honey and young bees out of a strong hive and put them in a new box. The new box either raises its own queen from the eggs, or you give it one.

I ordered a mated queen from a breeder in Georgia for $42 plus shipping. She came in a little wooden cage with three attendants and a candy plug in one end, in a padded envelope that I carried home on my own route.

There is a catch to splitting that new beekeepers learn the hard way. Older field bees remember where home is. If you move a split less than about three miles, those foragers fly straight back to the old spot.

So you plan for it. You take frames covered with young nurse bees that have never flown, and you shake in an extra frame or two of them, because a third of what you move is going to leave you.

I had been thinking for days about where to put the split, and the thought that kept coming back surprised me.

Joel and Lauren live a mile and a half down the gravel from the home place, on an acreage with a windbreak of cedars and a big garden out back. Lauren grows most of what they eat in that garden. Mindy had told me that, the way kids tell you things without knowing what they mean.

She had also told me the squash did not set fruit last summer. Big vines, lots of flowers, no squash. Lauren had blamed the heat.

It was not the heat. It was that there were no bees on that end of the road.

I called Lauren on a Thursday night. I had never called her about anything by myself before. We were friendly at Thanksgiving and polite at Easter and that was about the size of it.

“I want to put a hive by your garden,” I said. “One of mine. Mindy will help me keep it.”

There was a long silence on the line. I could hear the television in the background and then a door closing as she stepped outside.

“He won’t like it,” she said.

“I know.”

“He’ll think you’re rubbing it in.”

“I’m not,” I said. “Your squash didn’t set last year. A hive by the garden will fix that. And I promised Mindy.”

Lauren was quiet again. When she spoke, her voice had changed.

“He hasn’t been himself since March,” she said. “He won’t tell me what’s wrong. He says it’s work.” She let out a breath. “Bring it anyway, Gretchen. Bring it Saturday.”