Big Bay Breeze Banishes Bay Head Bees!

This week our Editor-in-Chief was under the weather and was unable to write a story. Luckily, his eight year old twins stepped up to the plate and helped him come up with something. They even created a logo. Enjoy!


Story by S.C. and C.K.

Local beekeeper, Windy Bea, recently lost all of her bees to a strong wind that swept through her backyard hive in Bay Head. When she woke in the morning she realized all her bees were gone. "I was thinking, maybe it's just a dream, so I pinched myself and... I did feel it," Windy said. "I was so upset that I was shaking, I didn't know where I would get my honey to feed my bears, feed myself and how to calm myself down!"

Artist depiction of queen and worker bees escaping.

Windy did eventually find 3 of her bees. "I was able to verify them by scanning them," she explained. When Windy first got her bees, she put a small chip in each one. These chips are similar to the ones they use for lost dogs, not the kind you find in cookies. Her scan of the found bees proved they were definitely from her hive.

Luckily for Windy she got a call from a neighbor who also keeps bees. He had noticed that there were suddenly many more bees in his hive than had been there before. Windy rushed over with her scanner and immediately started checking the bees one at a time. When the scanner confirmed a bee was hers, she put it in her bee transfer box. "It could take a while," admits Windy. "First I have to calm the bees with smoke, then grab one, scan it (which takes a couple of minutes), and then either let it go or put it in my box. In the past three hours I've scanned about 200 out of 30,000 bees. I probably could have done more if the smoke hadn't made me pass out for a while."

Windy is hopeful that when she finds her queen, many of her bees will follow it into the container. Until then, she'll keep doing it one at a time. "I really hope I find that queen soon," she said. "If not, there may 'bee' no fresh honey until July!"

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