Mother's Day Swarm

The swarm, resting in the apple tree.
That's 15,000 bees approximately!

This Mother's Day was pretty amazing. I was already happy with the day: breakfast with Laurent, then yoga, then riding the tandem with Joe to the Farmer's Market and meeting friends, then lunch on the patio. And then the best present of all appeared: a swarm of bees over the garage, which then proceeded to land in our apple tree from which we later captured them. Amazing!

Besides the super fun and excitement of hiving these wild bees and doubling our potential for pollination and honey now that we have two hives, some other great things came out of this:

- We learned more about our new bees' background from our neighbor Dave, who had observed them living on the neighbor-on-the-other-side's house for two years:

They used my pond as a water source and seemed to have a highway of sorts out over your roof... it looked like they were heading out towards the big berry patch farther out... but there were always bees in the garden.

So even though they're not exotic, in the sense of having travelled, it's still super-cool that we know exactly where they were before and that we also know that they weren't from a beekeeper's hive that split, but are truly wild bees. And actually, it's great news that they hadn't been swarming long since it means they're going to use all of those stores of honey that they gorged on before swarming to build comb inside their new home.

- We discovered that we're part of a cool community of bee-people now. I posted something to my Facebook about the swarm just after it appeared and we were getting ready to go get them, and my new beekeeping friend Rebecca and her adorable daughter Ruby responded instantly, and rushed over to help. After I posted an email message to the Marin beekeepers listserve, I got some amazing, helpful and charming responses by phone and email from fellow beekeepers, all of them strangers to us, and even found a long-lost acquaintance in the mix. One email in particular, which arrived after I shared with the list that we'd caught and hived the bees, read:

Congratulations, Ariane! What auspicious blessings for you! You must have had many lifetimes as a loving mother for this gift to appear now! Have fun giving them a new home!

I was already completely high on the experience of the swarm and its capture, and then had extended buzz from all the beekeeper love and support that poured in. Now that's sweet as honey!

So now we'll be settling in to managing two hives and are just thrilled with this gift that just fell out of the sky into our laps. It's probable that we'll see and catch another swarm. But a swarm just coming to us in this way? That's a once-in-a-lifetime blessing that we're savoring, every moment of that experience just vibrant like the bees.

Beeing

The bee experience so far has been utterly amazing. The class at Green Gulch Zen Center with Alan Hawkins was everything I hoped for - plenty of time looking into hives, plenty of time building frames, plenty of laughs with other bee-ginners. Shaking our bees into their new hive yesterday afternoon was super-fun, as was assisting Rebecca with shaking her bees in today.

Overall the thing I've been so struck by is the bee-mind that beekeeping requires. Like diving, the optimal physical state is one of utter calm, smooth slow and deep breathing, and that observatory frame of mind, taking in everything happening without reacting quickly. With the bee-veil over my face, I quickly drop into that undersea mind -- go quiet, slow, and calm. It's utterly restful.

I did manage to get stung yesterday - totally my fault, and I much regret the sacrifice of that one lovely bee. And what struck me the most as it was happening was -- yes, how much it freaking hurt -- that I didn't panic, I didn't move any faster, I just slowly moved away from the hive, pulled my pants down (got me in the thigh), and got the venom sac away from me.

This morning I spent about 1 1/2 hours sitting next to the hive just observing what the morning's activities would bring. I was utterly lost in bee-vision, fascinated, every sense engaged. After yoga, visiting the bees was my first order of business. After Easter dinner at the Amons, checking them for the night was the day's last To Do.

It's so delightful to be sharing space with these 10,001 remarkable organisms. They are teaching me so much already, lessons that are particularly well-timed.

Beekeeping 101

Today Joe and I had the first class in a four-class series in beginning beekeeping out at Green Gulch Zen Center. This represents the culmination of a long dream for me - I've honestly been interested in keeping bees for years, and am so glad that we're now on our way. I was surprised at how many people were in attendance, and at how most of them were from San Francisco, looking for ways to keep bees in an urban environment. Super cool!

So much of what we heard today echoed what know and think about the state of the planet: bees are dying due in large measure to the madness of commercial beekeeping, in which bees are trucked from Florida to California to pollinate the almond orchards, for example, subjected to the stresses of the transport, the chemicals used, the mono-culture diet. This is the same crap that is making us all sick and poisoning the earth in general. We're excited about doing our part to add more bees to our patch of the world.

Our teacher, Alan Hawkins, is all about natural beekeeping which suits us fine. We think we know just where in the garden we'll put our hive when we set it up in April (after getting our packet of bees with queen!), and can't wait to get some hands-on experience.