The Bee Tree

Thirty odd years ago when we moved to the farm, one of the best things about the old farmhouse was the big, old trees surrounding it. They provided abundant shade and also about the only landscaping. The first thing I heard when we moved was that we needed to cut those trees down! The reasoning being that they were water maples and were "weak" trees and would fall on the house. Now, I am a tree lover. I figure that any tree is better than no tree. These trees had sheltered this house for thirty years and survived the tornado that took down the house before this one. Weak isn't a word I would use to describe them.

They aren't the most beautiful trees. They have meager leaves that don't turn a pretty color in the fall. They literally rain little dead limbs during every wind. However they have survived tornadoes, ice storms, high winds, drought, and freezing temperatures. Unfortunately, time, weather and insects have done what all the "friends" couldn't convince us to do, cause us to cut one of them down. The huge old tree in the corner of the yard had been slowing declining over the past few years. Each year it would produce fewer leaves until one spring it didn't produce any at all. Our old friend had died.

Knowing that a dead tree is not only unsightly but a hazard, we made arrangements to have a local man come in and cut it down. He arrived one morning, checked it out, declared it to be no problem and set to work. I retired to the house to hide from the sight of my lovely old friend's demise. Suddenly I heard frantic beating on the door. The woodcutter stood on the porch waving his arms frantically and shouting for me to get a can of bug spray. It took me a few moments to realize he wanted me to spray him!! He was literally covered in bees! It turned out that our stately old tree was filled top to bottom with bees!

Now we had a different problem. How to get rid of the bees. Every farmer realizes the importance of bees to keep their crops pollinated, so exterminating was a last resort. However, we now had half a tree covered in bees. Hanging from one splinter was a ball of bees over two feet across. Bees were flying around everywhere trying to figure out what to do.

I located the number of the president of the local beekeepers club, who turned out to be a local priest. He assured me it would be no problem and he would bring a bee box and come over after mass the next day. He said the bees would return to the tree for the night and he would be able to collect them the next day. He arrived the next morning and promptly showed up in the kitchen. "You didn't mention that the colony was this large. I have to do some checking with other beekeepers" and off he went.

It seems that we didn't have just a hive with a queen and her workers, but a real, honest-to-goodness, years and years old bee tree. The entire tree was hollow and filled top to bottom with honey-comb and bees. We didn't have hundreds of bees, we had thousands, maybe millions. Bees had been calling that tree home for maybe 50 years. Amazingly, we had never noticed all the activity. They evidently were entering and leaving through the top of the tree covered by leaves. Now we noticed! We had millions of bees in the yard!

Over the next few days beekeepers came in their white moon suits to collect the bees. They would literally scrape the bees off the tree and into big white bee boxes. All in all they collected over 10 boxes of bees. They collected at least five queens. That in itself was a real indication of the size of the hive, since generally they will only have one queen at a time. When they had collected all they could or wanted ,we still had bees. Every morning we would find the stump swarming with bees. Now we had no choice but to spray the last ones so we could finish cutting the tree down.

Unfortunately, we didn't get any honey. The time of year wasn't right and the combs were empty. However, we did get to learn a lot about bees and beekeeping. I think about how long that stately old tree shaded us with its leaves while hosting the very bees that kept the crops producing and my garden flourishing. The good news is that one of the beekeepers reported back that the hive he established lived through the winter and is thriving in their new home. I hope they all did.

I know our tree would be proud.