A Sad Thing...

A sad thing caused my heart to worship and tell God thank you...

This weekend we discovered that the rest of our honeybees (Bina, part 2), the remnant who survived the bear attack and graciously welcomed a small wild swarm that a friend gifted us late in a season, died. We suspected something was off as we hadn't seen any activity from the hive even on the slightly warmer days in a couple weeks.

What we found when we opened the hive was beautiful comb (mostly empty, but a few uncapped cells of honey), clusters of healthy bees (no sign of mites or other disease) frozen together in the center of the hive. Yes, there were tears.

There were many cells with little bee bottoms hanging out. I incorrectly assumed they were new baby bees. As I continued my autopsy of the hive and did more reading, I learned those bees are specialized heater bees whose job is to keep the hive warm. The heater bees work by contracting their little muscles quickly, and not using their wings, raising their temp by 10 degrees which they can transfer to the hive as they climb into empty cells in the center of the hive.

Beautiful! God designed something awesome when He made honeybee!

Psalm 104:24 ESV

O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.

These little bees died doing exactly what they were created to do, keep their family warm.  Our best diagnosis of the cause of death was lack of resources for food (we supplemented with a pollen pancakes late in the season, but it wasn't enough) and in the wild swings in temperature, we did not properly keep the ventilation/wrap balance in check.

Are we sad? Yes. Will we put out the swarm traps in the spring and keep trying ?

Absolutely! The Bina bees will bless next year's bees as they left us with beautiful, clean honeycomb. More to learn? Always!

Peter and I are thankful for each day together on our little homestead as we keep stretching ourselves and learning!