I wanted to return 2 frames I harvested honey from about 3 weeks ago. I also wanted to know a few things too. I wanted to know if the bees were going to be better with out smoking them or if it was not going to be possible.
I got the frames I wanted to return out of the refrigerator. Took the plastic off it. Suited up. Thought since it was quick that I was going to just pop the top and it was going to be easy to pull a frame and exchange it.
I get to unstrapping the bee hives. Bees just poured out of the bee hive 2 that is the Africanized. Okay in under a minute I got stung about 20 times. Of all the damn places it was my socks. I must have killed a bee with my glove and it fell off onto the ground. I wear black socks unfortunately.
So I hobbled off about 10 feet with my hands swatting the bees killing them that are on my socks. Not good. I run off to my shop and go inside where I don't have visual with the bees and the bees don't either.
The typical protocol is suit up with gloves. Socks are fine with shoes. They've stung my socks, but it's only been twice that has happened. If I am going into the hives messing with them I am fine typically and never been as torn up as I was. I go in with my winter boots and ankles duct taped normally if I know the bees are going to go nuts or if I am doing a prolonged contact with them.
I got most of the bees off my ankles. looked at the screen on the door and not many were massed on the entrance. I take off to under the oak trees. Do some weaving and all the bees were gone. No buzzing. Into the house I go. Ankles and hands on fire. I was wearing gloves too and that's a first.
I get the bath tub going with cold water. Go to the kitchen and pop 2 benadryl. The sad part is that I am going to have to go out tommorow and strap the bee hives back down.
So here I sit. I should have smoked them. I should not have done anything to bee hive 2. Bee hive 2 has been behaving and well. I was only going to look in to see if they had queen cells and straighten up the bee hive box cause it's not sitting level on the bottom board. This of coarse was at night when I got to killing 50% of the bee hive. My guess is they have the bee hive requeened or 1 is about to emerge, but I won't know because they won't let me look inside. No need to force myself upon them.
I'm going to have to have a few bee keepers in the spring time come help me when I requeen the bee hive in springtime. Not looking forward to this at all. I am going to split this bee hive into 4. I will have a total of 5 bee hives. Bee hive 1 I will continue to add boxes to. No need to do anything other then re-queen it with a gentle queen with varroa reistance from California. They will be taking orders for queens in mid January for April - August is what I received from them in an email.
I am going to prepare this winter building bee hives. Should be fun building. I also am going to build bee hives to sell because I believe I can sell them locally to a hardware store and possible tractor supply that is local. Tractor Supply store just opened in my town.
Zak
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