When A announced that he was moving to New York, we had to find a new home for our communal beehive. For the past two years, the hive had sat in the far corner of A’s backyard beneath a canopy of trees. The bees enjoyed the shade and dappled sunlight, and didn’t mind the occasional backyard bonfire and midsummer barbecue. They generously gave their honey, which A packaged in small glass vials, and their beeswax, which he turned into peppermint lip balm. But with A leaving soon and no one in his group house interested in keeping up the beekeeping tradition, the hive had to find a new backyard – and fast.
L’s grandfather taught her beekeeping, and L taught A, and both of them taught me. I’d only helped out a few times, but it was enough to know that I loved the practice.
I love the science of it – learning about the complex social behavior of a hive.
I love the productivity of it – generating medicinal and culinary treasures from the process.
And I love the practice itself – visiting the hive like an old friend, gauging its mood, and being courteous and conscientious in my actions as caretaker.
With A gone, I wanted to continue to help out L with the hive and whomever she found to adopt it. That person was C, a friend of hers from her job at the museum who was insanely excited to move the hive into his backyard in Shaw, a 10 minute drive from where the hive currently was.
But moving a beehive is a little different from moving a dresser. It’s a living, buzzing organism and ecosystem comprised of hundreds of moving bodies. This creature can lash out too, engaging guerilla tactics to discreetly attack its perceived predators. Carefully and quickly, we took apart the frames and boxed them up, loaded them into a pickup truck, and rolled them down to their new home where we reassembled the hive. The two white boxes of bees vibrated with their buzzing and was warm to the touch.
From the back seat of the truck, I looked out the rear window, watching stray bees zip away with the current. We hoped they would find the hive in its new location, or otherwise discover a new hive to join.
By the time we arrived at C’s house, the bees were not happy. November is too cold for beekeeping in general, and the docile and sleepy bees were clustered inside the hive to retain heat. Once we started moving around the frames and uprooting the hive, they reacted in a way that you’d expect anyone to react – really pissed off. They began buzzing loudly and flying around like little maniacs. Where is my house?! I’m freezing! Angry! Bzzzz! C got stung in the neck, and we worked to reassemble the hive as quickly as possible.
But once we were done, we were done. Our clothes smelled like a bonfire from the smoker, and we celebrated our success with tacos and Mexican Coke. The stragglers flew around aimlessly, confused and disoriented. But by nightfall, nearly all of the workers had joined their sisters in the hive beneath the bean vines and yellow ginko trees.
Fantastic photos, glad you moved them all successfully! By the way in one of the photos you have the frames directly on the ground – best not to do this in case the queen walks off without you noticing. But perhaps you already had her safely somewhere at that point.
thanks for the advice! i’m a total novice, so any beekeeping wisdom is MOST welcome.
Don’t worry, you don’t sound like a novice
Wowzers! Marvelous photos and great description! Also, great tip Emily… I assume you are talking about the photo of the top box with the frames sitting in it. I know the queen is in the top box (the bottom is devoid of brood), do you have any suggestions what we should place the top box on while we do inspection on the bottom box? Maybe some cardboard or something? That might be how we lost our queen last time come to think of it…
Hiya, I’ve been trained to upturn the hive roof and place it upside down on the floor. The next hive box to be taken off can then be placed on top of this, slightly at an angle. If the queen bee falls off she will then be safely inside the upturned roof. You could even put a queen excluder on top to make doubly sure the queen was kept inside. Hope this makes sense!
definitely. super helpful. love your blog!
I would have never imagined the complexity in moving a hive. So fascinating!
Thanks for sharing your bee experience! Truly fascinating!
Wow! How interesting it all is…thanks for showing us all about it.Let us know how it goes…keep us posted.
Love it! I’ve been very interested in getting bees myself in the Spring, so thanks for a little nudge in the right direction
oooh nice! the more bees the better.
Really enjoyed the photos and description of the bees in boxes, simple beauty.
thanks so much! hope to share more beekeeping posts in the future.