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Visiting the Bees

Recently, I had an opportunity to visit the bee yard that Tim’s uncle Tom Foster keeps on a farm west of Portland. Tom has a deep knowledge of bees and beekeeping, passed down from generation to generation in the Foster family. As the bees surrounded us with their peaceful hum, he explained their habits and needs to me and showed me a bit about life inside the hive. Fascinating critters, these bees: although their individual lives are simple and narrowly focused, the life of the colony is complex, dynamic and intricate.

Here are a few things I learned during this visit:

• The pitch of their buzz changes when they’re aggravated. For the first half hour or so that we were there, the bees hummed quietly at a mid-note (let’s say Middle C). After opening up most of the hives to inspect them, though, their pitch jumped up several notes (A Sharp!) and the volume jumped up along with the pitch. It was clear from the buzz that they thought we’d been there long enough.


• The queen bee lays all the eggs, which are identical to start with. Those that she fertilizes will become females and the rest will be males (drones). The drones live only to mate with the queen; they get one brief liaison and then drop dead: the short, glorious life of a drone.


• There’s a particular altitude where queens and drones from any number of colonies get to meet and mingle, which Tom called the Drone Zone. It’s a sort of single’s bar in the sky.


• When a hive becomes too crowded, a new queen will be nurtured. About a third of the bees will leave with the older queen to swarm and find a new place to live; the remaining bees will start attending to the new queen.


• Most bees live a couple of months, although workers who collect pollen die after 2-3 weeks because their wings simply wear out and they can’t make it back to the hive. Queens can live for three or four years.

I hope to spend many more afternoons this summer with Tom at the bee yard, learning about them, pestering him with questions, and eventually harvesting their warm, delicious honey.

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