5/17/2023
While this is a play on words from the comedy Much Ado About Nothing which was wrote by William Shakespeare sometime between 1598 and 1599, it does describe what happened on Wednesday morning of this week.
The night before we had brought back a swarm that we knew had a bee population or at least bee traffic for at least a week. When I sat the trap by the permanent hive, I for whatever reason, opened the lower door.
Since we had a very busy day planned, we decided to get up at around 0600 to move the bees to the hive. They started moving sometime earlier and by the time we got to the hive it was empty. Pretty disappointing.
When I inspected the trap, I saw where the bees had started drawing out comb. And I mean, just started.
I closed up the trap and left it all day Wednesday on the chance that the bees might return. They hadn’t by Thursday morning, so we arranged with the landowners to rehang the trap.
Lessons learned
- bee traffic may not indicate that the bees have settled in
- the next time we’ll wait at least 14 days before moving the trap home
Since Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy, I guess this can be called a comedy of errors.
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