The Great Bee Rescue of 2010

We had a little surprise here on Monday - the weather got a little crazy and over the weekend it rained more than 1/2 inch of rain.  On Sunday it was pretty nice and warm and things were melting.  Then Monday morning the wind started screaming and we got about 1 inch of snow.  Even with all the water frozen by then that little bit of snow started swirling and the wind got stronger and stronger - 50 mph gusts!, which left us in a good old fashioned blizzard.  

For some reason I decided that I needed to drive around that day and only got stuck once.  I couldn't take any pictures that day, but the visibility was awful and at times you couldn't see anything at all.  It wasn't constant, but for 3 seconds the world was white.  The 1st picture is of a drift that was just down the road from me - I know there really isn't any reference there, but it is about 4-5 feet tall and about 30 feet wide.  On each side of the road as you can see the road was completely bare.   What makes this all the more impressive is that it only snowed about one inch of snow.  I haven't figured out how they measure snow when all of it ends up in piles like this, but someone comes up with an official measurement.

I didn't realize it until this morning since I had to work on Tuesday, but buried beneath this drift were my two hives full of my faithful hardworking bees.  This is what I found when I went to see what had happened to them.  Before Monday they were both standing just fine - I put a snow fence to protect them and it had worked beautifully so far this winter.

After about 10 minutes of digging I was able to find them and get them dug out somewhat.  After the blizzard the temperatures have dropped off - it's now down to about 0 and there is a 15 or so mile an hour wind so it's hard to stay outside for any amount of time - so I'll have to try to dig some more tomorrow.

The reason that I need to clear them out is that bees still have to have what they call "cleansing flights" in the winter.  That's a fancy nice way of saying they have to fly around and poop.  Bees won't poop in their hive - they wait until sunny days and then stand on the edge of their opening and poop.  Some of them fly around a little and do their business a little bit away from the hive, some of them die outside, and most of them make it back in.

I lifted up the top of the hive on the right and could still hear faint buzzing so I think they survived, but after this winter of getting buried, -32 F and wind I'm not sure they will be strong enough to make a comeback in the spring.  The time for ordering more bees is rapidly approaching and as much as I thought my hives would do well I think they will need some help from some bee friends.

So as even though I have to sit by the fire tonight to thaw out my toes, thoughts of buzzing bees, flowers, and sweet, sweet honey are not far away.