For those of you who follow the blog-style portion of this website at This Month’s Garden, I apologize in advance for relating the same cautionary tale in article format…but perhaps there are a few additions that may make you smile.
Mother Nature has a way of sneaking up on you every once and awhile and reminding you of just who is in charge.
If you are lucky, it will be a quick, painless lesson – a gentle reminder to never let your guard down while you partake of this great green adventure. If lady luck has passed you by….well, at the risk of making my nightmares, your nightmares, I relate the following cautionary tale for your education, amazement and revulsion.
I am a relatively new beekeeper. Three years doesn’t register as a blip to some of the professionals out there who tend hundreds of hives and measure honey in gallons not grams. Yet with this endeavor, my husband and I have enjoyed a fair amount of success, losing a minimal number of hives, battling mites and misconceptions, and having quite a good time in the process.
Disneyland for wax moths - a frame
During our three year adventure, we have somehow avoided the unavoidable, the invasion of the Greater Wax Moth, Galleria Mellonella. I know what they are (wax chomping insects), I know what they are supposed to do (wreck precious comb), and I know when and where they like to work (warm disused frames that no one is paying attention to), but after three years of only an occasional sighting, I thought the problem was somebody else’s. As a gardener, I should have my license revoked for that last statement, but there it is.
This year, we extracted more honey than we have in years past. Extraction is a labor intensive business, and so we spread the work out. Honey supers sat on the washing machine wrapped in black plastic for at least two weeks, and by the time we got to them, someone else’s problem had become ours. Dormant wax moth eggs had hatched and were eating away at precious honey comb. A few frames had to be discarded, but my husband dealt with the eviction process and I didn’t have to get my hands dirty, or even see the damage for that matter.
Fast forward one week. I skip down to the basement to look for some garden twine to win the war against errant raspberry canes. As I am hunting around various pots, bags of bone meal and old baskets, I hear the sound of movement (not the most ideal sound in a basement environment). A few steps away, a shelf houses all of the ziplocked bags of wax either awaiting rendering or bags of wax already rendered; and as I get closer, I realize there are no bags, just shreds of bags, and the entire pile is heaving with some sort of activity which makes my stomach do flip flops even though I can’t see the culprits.
My husband is away on business, so I can’t ignore it, play the girly-girl and go into the house for a soul stiffening gin and tonic. There are sadly no chickens to throw on the mess and simulate an Oreck Vacuum commercial. Instead, I put on my gloves, pick up the pile and put it on the floor.
Aren't they just precious?
The resulting chaos of three-quarter inch gray maggots, wax, frass and stomach turning mess will haunt my dreams for some time to come. I spent the next ten minutes accessing my inner child, trying to keep myself calm, and failing miserably as I cleaned it up. The larvae had chewed through every bag – even into the blocks of wax that had already been rendered. I tried to salvage what I could, but Gallardia mellonella had done its worst.
From this horror story, I humbly submit the following advice to those beekeepers, or future beekeepers, who, like I, thought they had Mother Nature licked:
1) There are almost always wax moth eggs present in comb. Assume this and always freeze or fumigate wax or empty frames before storing to kill the eggs;
2) Never assume that, because you don’t presently have a problem, there isn’t the potential for a problem;
3) Always extract honey within a few days of harvesting it;
4) Don’t let your husband go on a business trip lasting longer than two days; and,
5) Keep gin on hand in basement areas.
And remember, as with most situations in the garden and in life, it all depends upon how you look at it. As Friedrich Nietzsche remarked in the late nineteenth century, “What doesn’t destroy me makes me stronger.”
But then again, as I said back in 1985 wearing legwarmers and a fluorescent green tee shirt… “Gross!”
