FORT KENT, Maine — It’s been a tough couple of weeks for honeybees headed to Maine, including the 10,000 or so new buzzing arrivals here at Rusty Metal Farm.
In fact, for a while there, it was looking like the late, great Maine comedian Marshall Dodge was right and “you cahn’t get theyah from heeah.”
On May 21, a truckload of 460 hives carrying millions of honeybees from Florida to the Down East blueberry fields overturned in Delaware.
Beekeepers called in to deal with the resulting swarms were able to capture some of those migrant pollinators, but there is little doubt hundreds of thousands were killed in the process.
Around that same time, my own three-pound package of honey bees was scheduled to begin their own journey from Georgia to Rusty Metal Farm — a pretty straight shot due north via United Parcel Service’s overnight delivery.
Turned out, their trip was neither overnight nor particularly straight.
Sent out on May 21 from Tifton, Georgia, my bees drove and flew from there to Albany, Georgia; Louisville, Kentucky; Manchester, New Hampshire; Chelmsford, Massachusetts; and on to Presque Isle, where they were loaded on the UPS truck for the final leg of the journey on May 23.
Awaiting them on this end was a new hive furnished with fresh frames and foundation on which to build honeycombs and a batch of sugar syrup cooked up that morning to supplement their diets until there are enough flowers in bloom to supply their pollen needs.
But the longer I watched the online UPS tracker indicate they were stuck in Louisville, the more concerned I became.
Our bees are having a hard enough time surviving as it is and we need them.
Every year they perform millions — perhaps billions — of dollars worth of pollination work on crops supplying our food.
In fact, Maine’s blueberry farmers have reported the cost of renting migrant bee hives — like the ones involved in the Delaware crash — is the single largest farm management expense.
But in the simplest of terms — no pollinators means no food.
That’s a big reason I got into beekeeping — to help bring back the population that has been severely affected in recent years by colony collapse, pesticides, accidents and now, it seems, delivery mishandling.
Well, OK, I am hoping for some honey out of the deal, too.
Luckily, my new friends were only backed up a day and midday on May 23 I got the call I had been waiting for from the UPS driver: “Your bees are here.”
I have to say right now, any issue with delivery was mitigated by the UPS drivers here in northern Maine, who went above and beyond to make sure that, once here, my bees received first-class travel treatment.
Into town I rushed, where the driver had dropped the bees off at Frank Martin Sons Inc.
I am quite willing to bet I am the first person to walk into that forestry equipment dealer and ask, “Do you have my bees?”
Back home I drove with the buzzing box and immediately brought them inside, where they hung out on my kitchen counter, enjoying some of that sugar syrup as I went back out on a news story.
Later that evening came the big move.
Earlier that week, my friend Penny had presented me with a brand-new bee suit. Along with making me look like an Oompa-Loompa from the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory hazmat team, it, more importantly, protects me from any stings.
Given that I am allergic to bee stings, this is a good thing. As are the suit’s pockets in which I can stash the EpiPen.
My new bees are the Italian variety, known for being mellow, hard-working and great honey producers.
So far, I can attest to two of three.
Very carefully I carried the box out to the hive, where I pried off the cover and removed the can of syrup packed for the trip.
Next I pulled out the “queen cage” in which the queen and several of her attendants had made the trip, and placed it in the hive.
Turning the box over, I then shook it a few times, literally dumping 10,000 — give or take — honeybees into their new home.
They flew and buzzed for a bit — happy to be free and in the open air — and soon settled in as I closed up the hive and slowly walked away.
Over the next few days they freed their new queen by chewing through a sugar disc covering the opening to her cage.
By the time the queen has been freed, the female worker bees and male drones have accepted her as their queen and go about doing what they do best.
In the case of the female worker bees, that means for their six-to-eight-week lifespan tending the baby bee nursery — or “brood” — finding and collecting pollen, transforming that pollen into honey, cleaning the hive and, above all else, tending to their queen’s every need.
Oh, and they also feed the male bees, known as drones. As for the drones, they spend their days fertilizing the queen’s eggs, flying around at their leisure and basically living the good life until, come fall, the worker ladies have had enough and kick them to the curb and out of the hive for good.
Drones are not capable of stinging, and on a sunny, optimum pollen-collecting day, the workers are so single-minded in their tasks, I can stand very close to the hive and watch without a worry of getting stung.
For now, while the world’s population of honeybees may still be struggling, at least I know there is a happy hive here on Rusty Metal Farm.
I can almost taste the honey.
Julia Bayly of Fort Kent is an award-winning writer and photographer, who writes part time for Bangor Daily News. Her column appears here every other Friday. She can be reached by email at jbayly@bangordailynews.com.
