Last season felt like the rise and fall of my bee empire. In early 2013 I studiously put together boxes and frames. I had about 7 or 8 hives going into the spring. I was prepared for my most epic season yet. But disaster struck as hive after hive failed. The only good result was my hive in East Dallas swarming so many times that three of my friends got their first hive. Good for them that is. It was bad. I’ve never seen hive beetle infestations like I saw last summer. I still don’t know what happened. Was it the aerial mosquito spraying in the Dallas area? Poor weather? I heard through the grapevine that it was a bad year in Texas and not just in Dallas. But who knows. By the time this winter rolled around I was reduced to just 2 hives at my house and 1 hive in East Dallas. And then the East Dallas hive failed (the “hybrid” Langstroth/top bar hive). Two hives left. And I had the added problem that all my attempts to dissuade my bees from going to my neighbor’s wonderful backyard fountain had failed (including installing my own backyard fountain, in addition to my front yard fountain). So this spring I moved my two last remaining hives to East Dallas (pictured below).
I still had a mess of boxes sitting in my driveway back behind the house. Lacking room to put them in the garage, they just sat there. When spring came, bees came to rob them out. At least that is what I thought. But I began to be suspicious. Why are there 100 bees sitting on the outside of the box after dark? The box in question was the very bottom box of a stack of 8. The box was wrapped in a black garbage bag, but with weathered holes. I looked for incoming pollen but didn’t see any. My father Layne said it would not be unusual to have bees guard a robbing operation at night. I was less confident. So I finally took a look at the two hives with activity. Brood present in both. Wow. A passive trapping operation. So now I am back to the problem of having bees at my house which just won’t work with my neighbor. The plan is for my youngest brother to come get them and use them for his first beekeeping experience in College Station. So there you have it. A father, and now two sons keeping bees. I’m still a little bit demoralized, but I’ll pick myself up soon enough.
