The Sad Saga of the Flying Sugar Syrup

As a beekeeper, I've had lots of adventures that involved dropping. Last year I dropped a hive frame full of bees from my Proteus hive. Then there was the setting down of the small swarm hive in so many topsy turvy ways that the bees finally balled and killed the queen, blaming her for my mistakes.

This year it's sugar syrup. On Sunday I barely had time to open the hives to check on their food supplies. I wanted to replace the Ziploc baggies of sugar syrup. I filled two baggies, one for each hive, and set them upright in a 9" cake pan to carry them out to the hives. I took everything I needed out to the hives and then carried the cake pan and set it on the deck railing behind the first hive, Mellona.

I opened the top of Mellona and as I did, I heard a "PLOP" behind me. The bag of sugar syrup, off balance in the 9"cake pan, flopped over the edge of the pan like a fat Slinky and fell off of the deck. Oh, dear. These two bags represented 8 cups of sugar. I ran, beesuit and all down the deck stairs to rescue the fallen bag. It of course had hit the branches of the red tipped photinia on its fall to the pine straw below the deck.

The bag was leaking on all sides from the photinia slits. I folded the cuts to the center and raced into the house where I put this baggie inside another baggie and then emptied the remaining contents into the new bag. I carefully zipped the baggie shut and put what was left on Mellona.

This happened way too fast for pictures! Ah, the saga of my beekeeping adventures continues.