Blog PostEarly Morning Hive Emergency

Around 7:30AM, we get a call from our neice who lives next to our bee yard, the new hive was overturned and in the road! We had a strong wind storm over night, which had blown the hive over, since it was up on a bank (about 10-12ft high), it had rolled down the bank and was in the road. We threw on our clothes and headed to the bee yard to assess the damage to bees and hive.

Upon arrival, we saw frames all over the road, and was thinking the hive was a total loss! After getting out of the truck, we found that several frames had been broken, foundation and comb torn and ripped, but the main brrod box was intact upside down on the side of the road. I donned my bee suit and went to inspect, bees were obviously agitated, but calmer than I expected. I gathered up the other box and frames, put in some spare frames for the busted ones and sat the box on the tailgate of the truck. We then had the task of trying to turn over the brood box without dumping all the frames, and keeping the bees inside. I lifted up one side of the box and began working my hand as gently as I could under the box keeping the frames pushed up inside, then flipped the box over. We picked up the brood box and sat it on top of the other box, and almost immedaitely the bees seemed to calm down, now to get the hive back in the bee yard.

I walked behind the truck holding the hive while my wife backed the truck down the road (about 150 yards) so we could go up the driveway to get to the bee yard. Several times as the front of the truck was up higher than the rear, and basically I was looking slightly down into the brood box, a swarm of bees pelted the veil on my bee suit. As soon as the truck leveled out, they would head back to the brood box, obviously upset, yet I feel like they knew I was trying to help.

Finally back in the bee yard, we set the bottom board, brood box, the deep that was in shambles with some new frames scattered in and then the inner and outer covers. Bees seemed to realize they were home, they calmed down and mostly went back into the brood box. Now to come up with a plan to keep the same from happening in the future. Only time will tell if the bees and queen really survived.