Our very First Cut-Out.

Today my first ever attempt at a cut-out. Pouring down rain and all the bees are home...We learned SO MUCH! Thanks to tips from Brandon Federkamp from Austin TX and our first ever/old friends bee-crazy convo, I feel very prepared.

We got a call to an old farmhouse, nearly feral, with the deep rich sub-structure of a dedicated life-long farmer clearly visible in it's history. So we entered this abandoned farmhouse cooing over the dilapidated but wonderful features of the house. The colony is living in the wall, near a fireplace in a second story of this nearly 90 yr old house.

The wood floors were rich dark honey gleaming and each window a pale moon glow as we covered them with yellow sheets to keep the bees from flying to them. We removed the wood paneling, a layer of crumbling sheet rock and then a layer of plaster. We found the home cavity, perfectly framed with solid joists, from floor to about 5 feet up. Cavity was about 6 inches deep and devoid of insulation.

Brandon, from the lands of Africanized bees gave me great tips to withstand his normal feral cut-outs, which helped us a great deal although these bees settled down instantly and Peter and I only received one sting each. After we removed the wall Peter and I let them rest under a towel curtain while we toured the grounds. We found old fruit trees, fish aquaponic set up, bird roosts and many other fantastic features in this old farmhouse. The most special treat was spotting a goose nest over the garage complete with a big fat long black neck watchful quiet goose. She must have been sitting on her eggs, keeping things cozy and dry for she was very determined to blend in and not budge. From her perch she could watch the bees entrance in the crack running up the outside edge of the chinney and when I peeked out of the window near their hive, Mam Goose was looking intently back at me-eye level!

When we returned to the bees we learned the distinctive noise of a Queen-less roar from the top bar where we placed some brood and comb stuck on the wallboard. The main hive was gorgeously, velvety sumptuous and I got lost in the concept of pulling a sheet of bees over me like a blanket and napping in this old house, watched over by a brooding goose.

These bees were gentle as a pool of sunlight and were quite happy when we propped the wall board back in place near the hive, dropped the towel over the exposed opening and closed everything up tight again. We will return on Friday with a team to begin removing comb.

The best thing about the experience was working in this quiet and gentle way with my team mate Peter. We moved slowly and with hushed spare voices, with lots of rest periods. We used some smoke and we tucked exposed areas with cover so that the flying would be less intense. Now I am trying to decide if we will attempt to save the brood or not. It seems that experience would dictate that a destroyed hive would encourage them to abscond. Alas, we have no bee-vac and will need to find the queen somehow... This will be an intense learning experience. This is the first cut-out for our current little team. But we can do it. And they are wonderful... PREPARING FOR PHASE II: Dream Team nearly complete! Bee-Men Peter, Suma, Noah and fingers crossed Tony will be joining me for our first ever cut-out on Friday. Phase Two of operation Mam Goose will be attempted as we finish the actual extraction of this sumptuous four-foot, 10-yr old densely populated colony.

Our method will be different than what Peter and I have been googling. A lot of the beekeeping vids we studied were ultra-calm Southerners operating without gear and with chainsaws! All of them were performing major structural cuts into the Hive, discarding drone, harvesting honey and carving broodcomb to fit Langstroth frames.

My best mentor has been Brandon Fehrenkamp who performs cut-outs in the blistering Texas heat with potentially Africanized bees! I am learning where our methodologies may differ if only due to the great difference in conditions, for he certainly has the bee-centric bee-loved heart! Our developing conceptions and plans for this cut out have an opportunity to deviate from these methods because our conditions are absolutely dreamy.

Many use bee vacs during an extraction or cut-out, and I can see the efficiency of these moves. Getting on a ladder and doing a cut-out under an eave or from the outside of a home would make a bee-vac an invaluable part of a beekeeper safety plan. I received a good tip from Pollen Arts on how to make a gentle bee vac and another beekeeper I know (on the DL) may be releasing a version for purchase. But pushed by my consciousness really grokking the Hive + Colony = one Being, we are going to try to do this a different way.

We are going to attempt to cull the thick old leathery comb- and I do mean leathery-think beef jerky!--in long strips, clamp it at the top with chicken wire and hang it in a closet-type hive that mimics it's home cavity. I have never held such dense chocolaty solid comb before. It is made of a thin frame of wax reinforced for a decade with ten seasons of pupae chrysalis and propolis varnish. So it has developed a solid foundation of layers of cast off exo-skelatal type membrane with antibiotic layers of tree-sap/propolis. i am wondering if the comb can support itself! We will have everything we can think of available to modify the box that Peter built just in case as well, to make the box fit the colony.

It is common for bees to abscond a traumatic move, and some bees may be more prone to absconding than others, perhaps the bees experience a cut-out like a catastrophic bear maul. They would want to move out! So I am thinking of Her Hive as Body... what if we treat this like a major operation? How can we do this to keep integrity of structure and home? The idea is that we are going to try to keep this as gentle as possible, like surgery.

This theory deviates from the norm and there will be a lot of mistakes I am certain, but we are going to use low light, quiet voices, and many hands to brush bees off the comb into a waiting top bar hive so that we don't harm the queen (hopefully) hang cloth over the opening when we are not working it, and use feathers to brush away bees. Move slowly, take breaks.

My own beekeeping training has been to do an extraction with sort of field-medic haste. In many cases this is how it may have to be done! We are just in a fortunate position with a large open room in a quiet abandoned house and a team of gentle, focused menfolk who are willing to try this method. I have a really good feeling about this and preparing for it mentally like a sea-dive; I will be going into an ocean of mystery, with a star-map to guide me. I am hoping to undertake this with calm and peaceful energy, like the mid-wives do with child birth, ready for the painful contractions of hurting bees as we manipulate this great wise being. But hoping that her transition is smooth. We hope that she will understand our intentions and go along with it! That is the curve ball here! How will our new bees handle this?

I am praying and meditating like a Shaman might, in my way. Meditating on the hive-underworld and thinking of the Bee's reactions, needs, corporeal structure. It is hard to focus on anything else right now... and I am so excited, I wish it was Friday tomorrow!

Friday Late Afternoon

Extraction nearly complete. Exhausted from 100% focus and dedicated movement with our extraction. When the Brood became split I began to lose myself. I even said outloud " I feel lost, I don't know what to do." Noah our Papa Midwife reminded me to breathe. It brought me back to the task at hand. But I felt like I was so resonating with the Hive that that lost feeling was in the air. When I began to suss our where the Queen was with hearing attuned to the "Queen-less Roar" I was able to re-collect myself and keep myself on track. Our comb theory worked, up to a point. We realized that the comb could hold itself together til about 16" we still used our bracket method and managed to hang several feet of brood, pollen and honey in the tongue and groove, closet style hive box that Peter built. There were nurse bees on it and we will go back to collect the bees trapped in the windows to add to the hive-body to keep the Brood warm. To get the bees lost in window-land we laid honey and brood comb on the windowsills. We are hoping they will cluster and easily be swept into the nucleus hive we are bringing back to the wonderful house of Mam Goose and Mam Gander. ('Mam Goose' and 'Mam Gander' are also the two names for the Hives: should either or both survive. We met Mam Goose's husband this morning! The top bar hive Peter built, is waiting to be collected at the house as well. It is plumb against the wall where the Hive used to live and we have a slat of wood going from the entrance in the wall to the porch of the hive; a bridge. We are certain the Queen is in there as we watched bees crawl up the legs and into the entrance holes. Foragers were still returning, so Peter and I will return at dark to collect what has collected. There were thousands killed in this operation though we moved carefully. Hundreds died at the windows and it would have been much worse if we would have left them uncovered. Next time we will paper them. We felt successful although the weight of the Hive's losses also weigh on us as well. We learned a great deal. The bees were amazing. We watched them care for fallen comrades, raise their Nasanov to orient sisters and brothers, Drones were filling up on honey like it was going out of style and all brood quickly collected nurse bees to cluster. We learned about sound, about the lure of light, identified nurse and forager bees and more. If I were to re-do this I would have an extra box to keep smaller bits of broken comb and brush all the bees into a tupperware or cardboard box which we could then pour into the hung comb hive. Now we are hoping one or both of the tow hives will make it. We have formed a split of sorts; one does not have a queen, but she does have eggs....Grateful, tired and smelling of smoke and honey, i will rest until dark...

Friday 10:40 PM

We arrived at the house, now haunting with the quiet nightfall.

High up, framed with ivy, the red silled window showed the bees clumped where we laid the honey and brood comb. Mam Goose was still in her roost, watching the shenanigans with her sharp black profile and round eye. The ghosts of the farmhouse gathered at the door and welcomed us in with a whisper as the door swung into the dark kitchen. We passed the silent dusty piano and made our way up the stairs, the smell of the nighttime house as dank as a cave. The room when we entered was dark and quietly buzzing as we made our way with flashlights toward the remaining clusters of bees. We used a slow scooping technique and gathered the bubbling handfuls of clinging bees. We then let them fall gently onto the bottom of a cardboard nucleus hive before giving a small shake to release the rest. The box took on an assertive tone and within moments was wafting with the nasanov scent of queen pheromone. We kept the lid on between brushes and used a feather to drop-stun as many as we could singly dislodge. After clearing the windowsills and sweeping the fallen, removing the curtains and picking up the leftover deitrus we closed up the top bar and moved it to the center of the room. The top bar was heavy, filled to the brim with bees, brood, honey, pollen, bee bread all in a solid and beautifully made peaked roof top bar. A thousand or more bees were left clustered in the bottom corner of the wall. Peter gently lifted the bubbling mound of bees, dropped them softly in the cardboard nucleus hive and when we had gotten at least 80% we turned off the lights and sat silent so we could listen to the humming and allow the bees to work in darkness.

I have never sat within the sound of bees at night. I sat with my head hung low, near the wall and the nuc box and listened to the frustrated roar of the dispersed. For a minute the air was vocal with sharp wingings and suddenly they dropped a notch. The remaining wall bees kept decreasing in tone and the box kept up its nasanov marching song. It was dark in the room, and this room at the top of the house smelled good. It was dry with dusty wood floors and you could smell that. The room smelled of our smokers and of course also smelled like the open wall still sticky with honey.

In the darkness, with the bees open and close I was able to hear sounds within the sounds of the buzzing bees. I felt the air of their night flight whoosh across my face and began to discern voices within the choral communication of these different sets of bees. I listened them speak of ther condition and then within the sound choral elements and symphonic splashes emerged. Deeper, layered within the song were exceptional tones and harmony, angelic and bluesy rifts and tills. My mind beded and warped the noises and I felt as if I heard them slowed down. I could pick out sweet dense vibrations randomly syncopating, the buzz dance of a discovery waggle, the steady drone of the nasanov choir who I know from past swarm catches were now coating the inside of the box in an ordered pattern like a net of pearls along the walls and floor of the box, calling loudly the clarion call of join!

The wall hive was soft, the last foragers of the day, the honey drunk wall cleaners and their hum started to calm....

During the absorption of all of this complicated and detailed music, in the warm dark I heard the song as the song of my people too. The sound we make when we tone the Sacred Bee Song together. The harmony and the flashes of discordant, the pulses of perfection, the lost distressed, the bleat of a baby, the mother's yum rumble, the radical preacher....slowly quieting until there are the ones left in the parking lot at the end of the dance.

I am not exagerating to say I could have sat there until I drifted off to sleep. The sound itself becoming more magical in every moment, the potential for discovery in the exposed voice with its ranging variety. It could have stolen me like faeries at nightfall and I could have been made small in my dream and gone wherever they wanted to take me.

After drinking in the noise and losing myself in the secrets and mystery these songs intoned we finally turned on the lights and feather flicked as many more as we could, closed up the boxes, tucked a small shelter around the last stragglers and carried the gear and hives to the waiting truckbed.

I held the nuc box on my lap and felt the heat where the box met my thighs. I could feel the vibration under my hands and the perfume warmly radiated lemongrass, sweet melissae...

Peter will take them to his land and tenderly tip the box over a hole in the top of the closet hive. This will allow them to sift into the tall closet hive where the brood hangs like slabs of salmon in a smoker. These few thousand bees will add to the population of nurse bees already within who never abandoned the brood of sisters, their wriggling mewls invoking a stronger dedication than to the queen herself! This last population boost will give them all a better chance to make it through the cold night

The long ride to the hive's new home took up over hills and down gentle rolling country roads, past pear orchards and silvered fences. Mam Goose and Mam Gander are now sitting nestled unter the red barked manzanita whose silver leaves provide a lacy shawl against the winds. They have a view of tall hills, oaks and mistletoe and abundant lavender, fruit trees and gardens from their front porches.

We will take another look tomorrow and finish our prayers with these bees. Then we will let them rest, to swarm, to build, to thrive to abscond, whatever they choose.

This experience has left me with a rich and deep sensorial memory. I watched a destruction and reconstruction of an entire world, I felt the animal crawl, scent, sing and sting. Like a moving dream the huge super-organism of it dispersed in the air, a wild cloud, a storm... I met the singer, wore her thousand voices, watched the body fly into a million pieces, gathered them, warm golden pebbles, in hands open in supplication to them. Pouring them, immortal jewels, into a simple box which transformed it into a treasure chest of hope. Within our thousand failures is a tiny thread of a miracle. Perhaps they will thrive...

The vibration has entered me through my ears and hearts and hands and through my blood stream via a final parting sting to my mouth. My upper lip is hot with the throb of venom and it feels as though I have been wildly kissed.

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