Honeybee art

Honeybees are remarkable creatures. Had someone told me this before I got my first hives, I would have agreed, but not really understood. Now I understand.

I had a box on one of my beehives that was a mess. I realized it late last summer. It was the first box I assembled after becoming a beekeeper and didn't understand the value of using wood glue and extra nails. When I tried to lift the frames out to harvest the honey, they fell apart, and the comb with the honey flopped sideways. As I said, it was a mess.

When I asked one of my honeybee mentors, he suggested that I leave it there over winter and fix it this spring. "They can eat the honey to help sustain them during the winter," he said. That made sense to me.

Last week, I opened the top, and the box was still a mess, but the bees were working with it. They weren't happy, but I lifted the messy box off, put it in my honey trailer, installed a new hive that I recently built, and closed it up.

Once in the honey house, stripped the messy comb and honey out of the frames and put it in a big aluminum baking pan. Then I took that pan full of wax and honey and rigged up a temporary box on the hive and closed it up.

On Wednesday, I went back out, removed the pan and the temporary box, and replaced the cover. Now the hive is like all the others except it has sturdy boxes and frames. 

The bees had removed all the honey from the comb in the pan and put it on the new box I'd installed when I started this process.

I put the pan in the honey trailer and took it to the honey house. The bees swarmed after me saying unkind things about my mother.

Today, when I got a chance to look at the pan of wax, I was amazed. They not only removed the honey but were transforming a pile of wax into a piece of organic art.