Gone Bees

This would have been my fourth year as a beekeeper.  Whoever coined the term “beekeeper” had it all wrong.  Humans don’t keep bees.  Bees are a wild inspect.  Yes, they may agree to live in a wooden box hive for a short time but it is only because it is to their temporary advantage.

If you recall my story from last year I bought a package of bees with a queen.  Inside of a week the queen disappeared.  A have cannot survive without a queen.  The good folks who I buy my bee packages from took pity on my and gave me a second queen.  I never knew what happened to her.  My hunch is that she was rejected and the drones killed her.  This was short sighted because without a queen they all died within a month.  By August the hive was empty.
I had great resolve this year.  The bees were not to come from Florida but from Georgia.  The bee mongers drove to Georgia and watched them be carefully loaded into their temporary homes and were personally transported to south central Wisconsin.  The bees were ready for pick-up on Monday, my bee keeping friend and I made the trip to Columbus Tuesday afternoon.

We placed the queen in the hive and shook the bees into the box hive.  That evening I watched the bees fly around their new home and discover Wisconsin.  On Wednesday I was busy and didn’t pay much attention to the bees.  Wednesday night I noticed there were no bees going in and out of their new home.  We enjoyed dinner with our bee keeping friends and I expressed my fear that they were gone.  Just gone.

Thursday afternoon I suited up and took apart the wood hive.  As I suspected gone.  Only a few dead bees filled the bottom of the hive.  “I QUIT” I shouted to no one in the back yard – Mother Nature heard me I’m sure.  I let my friend know my bee keeping days were at an end.   I called the bee sellers to sell my sad, sad story.  They offered to give me another package, with a queen free.  Sorry, no.

On Saturday I met my friend down town for coffee.  From across the street he shouted “You won’t believe what happened.”  We bought our coffee and sat outside the coffee shop in the town square.  “They’re gone.”

“What?”
“I gave them a new queen and they’re gone.”
How likely is it that we both purchased bee packages and both swarmed away.  I guess Wisconsin isn’t Georgia.
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They are gone bees.