It’s been kind of a crazy summer, which I won’t even begin to go into, but now this: ROBBER BEES.
As a brand-new beekeeper, flying by the seat of my pants with the help of my mentor, Jessie “Bee” Brown, I’ve experienced more emotions than I thought a beekeeper would: joy (bees make honey), wonder (baby bee eats her way out of her cocoon), disgust (wax moth larvae), terror (my initiation sting), and some despair (comb breaking off its top bar, and dealing with that mess).
I’ve loved coming up with creative solutions to small problems, and find the beekeeping community to be eccentric and charming, with a definite DIY approach.
But the fact is that every time I start to feel like maybe this bee thing isn’t too hard, something totally unexpected knocks me on my butt.
Enter the robber bees. When I called Jessie to tell her that the bees were acting strangely, it took her about 5 seconds to diagnose the problem. “You gotta get in there and close down the entrance!” Which sounded like a whole lot of fun, since there were a bazillion cranky bees milling about the hive, looking for trouble.
The duct tape is my half-assed but functional attempt to reduce the entrance to my top bar hive, so the robber bees can’t get in. Now the bees who live there have to use three individual bee-size holes on three different sides of the hive, rather than the big family-style entrance.
I removed the tape after the first invasion ended, but two days later the marauders were back, so I think I’m just going to leave that sucker taped up until it’s cold?
