It started like any other day. The sun was just coming up over the horizon, our free range chickens were pecking around the yard and Bumbles the rooster was making sure all the neighbors were awake.

Sipping my coffee with our faithful farm dog, Oscar, the morning tranquility was suddenly rattled by a huge crash.

Oscar and I looked at each other, “what was that?!” A quick glance around the farm, and everything still looked in order. The chickens didn’t even react at all.

It sounded like a tree had fallen, but I didn’t see anything out of place. We have a pretty good patch of woods on the farm and trees will occasionally give way, so I resolved that I would go inspect the woods later. It didn’t seem like an emergency at the time.

A couple hours later, I was making my way down to inspect our beehives. This time I was alone. Oscar had mistaken a honeybee as a flying raisinette and has learned to avoid the bees. He was waiting, parked in his favorite chair by the window.

As I came around the back of the house, where the crash had come from became abundantly clear.

A tree absolutely fell from the woods. But, it wasn’t IN the woods, it fell right in the middle of our beehives. From all appearances, it fell right on top of one of our beehives! Yikes! I hope they survived.

My mind began racing. I immediately pictured the worst. Our bees were crushed by an oak tree. Would there be anything left of them? Could I restore the hive somehow? Would I ever find the queen or is the colony a total loss?

I become attached to all my animals. They are all like family to us. Even Bumbles who crows way too often and way too loud. Our bees are special to me. They work so hard to make the sweet, delicious honey that we enjoy. They were minding their own business, doing what bees do and “Wham!” out of nowhere their house is crushed.

It would be a sad day indeed, gathering up the remnants of a lost honeybee colony. I was also sure the bees would be in a particularly foul mood, understandable given the circumstances.

I pictured spending the rest of the day picking through the rubbish of what had been a thriving colony of bees, all the while getting stung as the bees try to defend what’s left of their home. I couldn’t blame them, they’re just bugs after all. They wouldn’t instinctively know that I was there to try to rescue them.

I didn’t want to acknowledge they were gone. I didn’t want to go look, but what choice did I have?

With great trepidation, I made my way around to the other side of the tree. I steeled myself up for the sight that I was sure awaited me, a crushed beehive surrounded by a cloud of angry bees.

As I ventured for a closer look, the beehive was completely buried beneath the oak branches. Now I was convinced. Gone. All gone. There is no way a couple little boxes of bees could have survived this disaster. Gone.

I tiptoed closer yet like if I didn’t see it, it didn’t happen. But I knew. This did happen.

I’ve had beehives tumble before. In early May, one of the pallets used as a hive platform broke, sending the hive heels over teacups backwards onto the ground. I got luck then. The hive stayed relatively intact and was easily reassembled.

We had a bear pay a visit to our hives one night. The hungry bear looking for honey knocked off one of the top deep boxes from one hive. That’s it. Coincidentally, just that same day we added that deep box and it was completely empty. Whew! Lucky again.

But this was different. Quite literally out of the clear blue sky, an unstoppable force dropped tons of wood, truck, limbs, sticks and leaves directly on top of the boxes. If I remember correctly, there was a witch over the rainbow who suffered a similar experience only from a house. She didn’t survive either.

“Ok,” I said to myself, “you did three tours in Iraq, how bad could it be?” and I looked.

Then I saw it. It was a miracle. There’s no way this really happened.

The tree missed. Just by a foot or two, but it missed.

I couldn’t believe it. Not only did the tree truck miss the hive, but so did the limbs and branches!

Sitting there, in the middle of all the flotsam and jetsam of the fallen tree were our bees. They were acting like nothing happened at all and just going about their busy day.

Unbelievable! Lucky again!

This makes three lucky breaks for the bees. I said a prayer of thanks. Thank you for saving the bees. Thank you for sparing me the labor of trying to put the Humpty Dumpty of this bee colony back together again.

There was still plenty of work to do. The tree would have to be cut up and haul away. But instead of killing a whole colony of honeybees, this disaster provided a nice harvest of fire wood for the upcoming winter.

The bees will never know just how close to extermination they were. Or do they?

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