The Hardest Part of Beekeeping Is Leaving the Lid On

A few weeks ago I was working the Texas Beekeeping Association booth at the State Fair when a young high school girl asked me, “What’s the most challenging thing about being a beekeeper?”

I caught the question. I’d just never been asked that one before, and it took me a minute to think about what my answer would be. I told her, “What a great question.” Then, so the pause wouldn’t get awkward, I said, “Give me a few seconds to think about my answer.”

I didn’t land on mites. I didn’t land on Texas heat, or a summer dearth, or finding the queen in a booming hive. Those are hard. The thing that still takes the most discipline, even after years of keeping bees around North Texas, is knowing when not to open the hive.

New beekeepers want to look. I did too. You suit up, light the smoker, crack the lid, and pull frames because you care and because you want to see what’s going on in there. The problem is the bees pay for every one of those visits, whether you learned something useful or not.

What an opening actually costs

A healthy colony runs the brood nest like a tight little factory. Temperature, humidity, scent, and the propolis seal are all part of the work. When we pop the cover, we break that seal, dump heat and moisture, and pull bees off the jobs they were already doing — foraging, feeding brood, guarding, curing honey.

They will put it back together. They almost always do. But that recovery burns stores and time. A calm, quick inspection on a good day sets them back a little. A long, frame-by-frame dig on a windy or cool day sets them back more. Do that every weekend just to check, and you are managing the colony for your curiosity instead of for the bees.

This isn’t only something you notice after a few seasons in the bee yard. Back in 1975 and 1976, V.I. Lebedev at the Russian Research Institute of Apiculture tracked colonies against how often they were opened. The colonies inspected every six days went into the main flow lighter and made less honey. The colonies opened just four times in the season were the strongest and made the most. The ones opened every twelve days landed in between, and even those did better when the beekeeper didn’t pull every frame. Less disturbance, stronger bees, more honey.

I don’t treat that as a rule to never look. I treat it as a reason to have a reason.

The drive-by

Most days I don’t open a hive at all. I walk the yard and do what I call a drive-by. I stand in front of the entrance and watch the traffic. No lid, no frames pulled. If the traffic is good and I can see bees bringing in pollen, I skip that hive and move on to the next one. The colony keeps its seal and keeps working while I get what I need from the landing board.

I also gently lift the hive. A heavy hive with steady traffic is not a reason to look. A light hive in a dearth, or a hive that feels empty when it shouldn’t, is.

The drive-by only works if you stop when it tells you to. Weak traffic, bees crawling, fighting at the entrance, a pile of dead bees, no pollen when the other hives are bringing it in — that’s when I suit up. Otherwise I don’t.

When I open on purpose

When I do go in, I go in with a job. In the buildup I add boxes when the colony is filling the one it’s in. I’m not in there hunting mites. I’m building these bees for mite tolerance, so a routine mite check isn’t part of the plan. If I need to requeen, or it’s time to make sure they have stores before a dearth or before winter, I go in.

Then I get the answer and get out. Eggs and young larvae? Brood pattern? Room? Stores? I don’t pull every frame because the box is already open and I might as well. That’s how a five-minute check turns into a half-hour setback.

The part nobody puts on the checklist

The challenging thing isn’t the smoker or the hive tool. It’s standing in front of a good hive and having the patience to walk to the next one.

Bees are interesting. You want to see the queen. You want to show somebody the brood. You worry that if you don’t look, you’ll miss something. Some of that worry is useful. Most of it, once you know what a healthy entrance looks like, is just us.

The girls are usually better off when we leave a working colony sealed up and go bother the one that actually needs us.

Open when the outside story changes, or when the calendar says you have a real job to do inside. Then close it up and let them get back to work.

That’s the practice. The hard part is sticking to it.

The inspection numbers come from work by V.I. Lebedev at the Russian Research Institute of Apiculture, run in 1975–1976 and published in Pchelovodstvo (Apiculture), 1978, no. 1, pp. 2–3. Colonies opened every 6 days averaged 3.3 kg of bees before the main flow and 20.3 kg of honey. Colonies opened every 12 days, frame by frame, averaged 3.6 kg of bees and 23.1 kg of honey. Colonies opened every 12 days without a full frame-by-frame inspection averaged 4.0 kg of bees and 24.9 kg of honey. Colonies opened four times in the season averaged 4.4 kg of bees and 29.2 kg of honey.