The Heartbreak of an Urban Beekeeper
It’s 60 degrees and sunny as I write this. Rays of sunlight are dancing across my desk. After enduring our brutal Chicago winter, I should be dancing too. But I’m not.
I wanted to share pictures of my garden with you. My earnest chives and parsley have poked their brilliant green heads above the soggy leaves and cold soil. Yesterday, I knelt down and broke off a tiny chive—my first taste of spring. But it was bitter.
I wanted to give you an update on our seedlings. The pepper plants are thriving under their fluorescent lights. The celeriac, eggplant, and tomato seedlings are already standing two inches tall. There is something magical about the day when the plants stop looking alike and begin expressing their unique characteristics—like the tiny fern leaves on the tomato plant. But the magic is lost on me.
I wanted to share my recipe for Ricotta Tart with Butternut Squash. It’s particularly satisfying to cook with local ingredients in March. But even a pretty tart can’t chase my doldrums away.
Most of all, I wanted to share a triumphant story about our bees. I could hardly wait to tell you that they survived the winter too. I was thrilled to share the post-snowmaggedon video we took, as the bees came rushing from the hive on a warm day in February. But my story is anything but triumphant.
When the second warm day of the year arrived nearly a month after the first, our hive was morbidly silent. My husband and I crouched in front of our hive desperate for a sign of life. We thought we’d done everything right. We’d left several frames full of honey. We added a few sugar-filled frames as a precaution. We were bereft and completely mystified. How could our hive have survived the worst part of the winter, then perished in the final days as spring and its promise of pollen was in sight?
In the end, it wasn’t enough. And I couldn’t help but think that we weren’t enough. We’d failed our bees just as I had feared we might since the day we brought them home.
So what went wrong? We don’t know for certain. There is a saying among beekeepers: “Ask ten beekeepers the same question, and you’ll get eleven different answers.” Maybe they starved. Maybe they froze in the cold snap that followed their February flight. Maybe….
The long-awaited spring equinox has arrived, and the earth seems to be awakening before my eyes. Alas, hope, my hope, springs eternal. With my tiny chives as an example, I’m going to venture into the chilly spring, not knowing what the future holds. And soon, we will start again with new bees in our hive. I remain an urban beekeeper.
Themocracy
Bob,
Bummer to hear. But thank you for sharing. Nature is crazy like that, such wonder and such beauty all at once. If you find out any more about what the root cause was please share with us.
And good luck with your next set of bees. I am looking forward to getting some, once I get a better handle on my chickens.
CTemp
Argh! So sorry for this setback. And, I know it will only be a setback, and your hive like Spring around us will have an inexorable return. Different bees, true. But likewise different crops.
Please keep us posted, and thank you for sharing your journey.
Bobbi, It is hard not to be sad when this happens. In the years I have been keeping bees, I have lost dozens of hives over the winter. And, it usually happens as you described: They make it to a warmish day and then they are dead suddenly. I have a couple of theories about this that I will share with you sometime. Don’t give up! Be brave, get another package of bees, clean up your hive and start over. And, you can always call me. I am here to help. Check out http://www.greenmetropolisfair.com – I am doing a beekeeping panel there and another at Green Festival.
Chuck – I think bees might be easier than chickens. We’re hoping to get some chickens soon too…once we get a handle on our bees.
Kathryn, you’re right of course. We’re trying to take it in stride.
I will certainly report back when I know more about what happened to our hive.
Richard-thank you for the heartfelt encouragement. I would love to hear your theories. Hope to see you soon.
[...] than anyone, I wanted to share an excerpt from a piece I recently wrote for chicagoREgen.com titled The Heartbreak of an Urban Beekeeper. When the second warm day of the year arrived nearly a month after the first, our hive was morbidly [...]
[...] after I shared the news about our hive collapse with the ChicagoREgen community, I spoke with our mentor, Bob Kress from Kress Apiary. He had a [...]