In winter, my mind will wander to the worst, and so for months I have worried something was wrong inside my hive. On sunny days, I didn’t see the bees sneaking out for water, or if I did, they were behaving strangely, poring over the fall honey frames on the front porch, or pasting dots of sunset orange propolis on the outside of the hive.
When I knocked on the hive wall on cold days, I didn’t hear a reassuring hum in reply.
On a warm morning before work this week, I opened the hive, and no bees rose up to warn me away. The 12 frames left heavy with honey in fall to get them through the deep freeze looked to be sipped dry. No sounds. No stings.
I wondered if the colony had outgrown the hive and decamped for larger quarters. Bad would have been a hive collapse, in which the bees swarmed and flew away to die. Worse would have been that the hive was poisoned by pesticides sprayed far away and brought back in pollen and entombed in wax.
On a day when the temperature broke 80 degrees, I looked inside again, and there were bees. I pulled some frames, and there was honey. I listened, and there was evidence of the bees warming and growing busy, reclaiming their rhythms from the worst of the winter. Dana Coffield, The Denver Post
