Oh Honey !

A worker honey bee has a very short life span. In fact the average honey bee lives an average of 28 days, which means the hive is constantly hatching new ones to replace the ones that expire.

When old worker bees die, their hive mates carry them to entrance of the hive and drop them out. I suppose it's more or less the bee's version of a "burial at sea."

The make up of a bee colony is incredibly interesting, but the couple of facts I've already mentioned here will give you some idea how my creative mind got me into the following situation.

Here's what happened:

When we went out to check our hives after a pretty severe rainstorm a few days ago, I noticed a rather large amount of bees laying on the ground. A half dozen or so is not uncommon, but on that particular day there were at least a dozen or more outside each hive.

As I bent down to examine the expired bees I noticed that quite a few of them still had pollen attached to their legs. That is not typical, but I surmised that they were caught in the heavy rain and hail and just didn't quite make it all the way into the hives before succumbing to the severe weather.

It only took me a minute to realize the potential. I wondered how many people had ever had the opportunity of seeing a honey bee laden with pollen up close and personal.

Being an educator and a wanna-be entrepreneur I immediately seized on what I perceived to be a brilliant opportunity to fill both goals. I carefully gathered all the deceased bees that were carrying pollen and took them into the house.

The bees were soaking wet from the storm, so I placed them on paper towels and laid them on the hearth in front of the wood stove to dry. Meanwhile I contemplated the best way to mount and display the bees in shadow boxes.

I imagined rocketing sales on E-bay as teachers brutally outbid each other in order to obtain my wonderful specimens.

After about half an hour I checked to see how well the bees were drying on the hearth. To my surprise one of the bees was wobbling feebly on her feet. I was elated! One was actually still alive.

I quickly rushed into the kitchen and retrieved a pint jar to put her in until she finished recovering. I wasn't able to locate a lid for the jar but I figured since the little bee was so weak I'd have plenty of time to locate some cheesecloth or similar material to stretch over the mouth of the jar after I got her into it.

When I returned from the kitchen with the jar I noticed a second one was now trying to get to it's feet. I yelled for my husband, Bruce, to come and help me get them both into the jar.

By the time Bruce came to my aid 4 of the bees had revived and were stumbling off in various directions. He held the jar while I tried to scoop each of them up with a small piece of cardboard and drop them into the jar.

The job was made more difficult because he was laughing so hysterically that he kept jiggling the jar.

Suddenly the recovery effort came to a critical point. All the bees, who had apparently been suffering from hypothermia, were snapping back to life faster than I could catch them.

Bruce was getting concerned because he was covering the mouth of the jar with his bare hand and the three or four bees already in the jar were quite apparently becoming angry. I had no choice but to stop catching the ones on the hearth and find something to cover the jar with.

I was somewhat relieved when I was finally able to secure the cheese cloth to the top of the jar. My relief was short lived however, because upon returning to the hearth there were only a couple of bees still struggling on the paper towel. The others, whose numbers were close to 20, had gone missing.

For the next two hours the house reverberated with the sound of angry bees buzzing from room to room mingled with Bruce's uproarious laughter and my frantically high-pitched calls of "Here!..Quick..Over here..I found one!"

Eventually we captured all of them but by then it was too late to put them back outside so I placed the jar in the laundry room. Bruce questioned the move and suggested that the laundry room might be too cold for them. I rebutted with "Well I don't want them to chew through the cheesecloth and get out again."

When we went to bed I wasn't able to sleep because Bruce's words haunted me. Finally about 1 AM I quietly slipped out of bed and checked on the jar of bees in the laundry room. Sure enough, they had gotten too cold. They were laying on their sides in the jar. Feeling guilty I brought the jar into the house, placed it in the bathroom and rigged a trouble light over it for warmth. Within minutes the bees had once again recovered.

It was then that I noticed I had inadvertently pulled one corner of the cheesecloth loose while moving the jar into the house. I quickly tried to tuck it back under the rubber band that had been securing it. SNAP! The rubber band broke and the cheesecloth went sailing into the air. It took me over an hour to recapture them again.

The moral of this story? Oh honey...never trust a dead bee!