The Power of the Sting

Now that I am in my ninth year of beekeeping, stings are relative in their impact on me.  Often I get stung on my hands since I don't usually wear gloves, but most of the time within a half hour, I have no idea where I was stung or how many times.

Don't get me wrong - I often inspect hives and don't get stung at all, but probably do get stung about once a week during bee season.

Julia and I went to Chastain to check on the hives there.  We have had three hives there, but she took the swarm hive she collected and took it to her mountain house to gather sourwood honey.  So there are two hives now at Chastain:  her hive which overwintered there and my hive which was a swarm collected by a beekeeper who wanted to donate it to Chastain for teaching purposes.

First we opened her hive.  It was doing well, but not busting at the seam with bees.  There were plenty of bees in the hive.  We saw a lot of larvae being pulled out of their cells by other bees.  This larvae was white and all the way to the stage where their eyes are developing.  We wondered if this were a particularly hygienic queen or if the bees had been affected by pesticide.

I love the last photo where there was old comb and the bees added to it this year with new.

We have been told that the city doesn't use pesticides on the golf course.  Apparently they can't afford it so they just keep the course well cut.  (The hives are in the center of one of Atlanta's biggest parks and golf courses).  However we noticed an area right by the hives that had been sprayed with Round-up and when we spoke to the directory of the Chastain Conservancy, he told us that they use a good bit of Round-up in the area of the quonset hut where the hives are.

Julia's hive did have eggs, an obviously thriving queen and stored honey.

In the process of the inspection, she went to her car to get a frame.  Her ten frame boxes included one box that only had 9 in it and she had an extra frame in her car.  We had draped the hive with pillow cases to keep the bees calm, but when Julia returned, she rapidly pulled off the pillow case and as I reached for a frame, I got nailed in the third finger of my left hand.

I walked away and flicked (I thought) the stinger out.  A few minutes later I realized I had not gotten the stinger so I used my fingernail to get it out for good.  My finger felt tight and swollen.  It has continued to feel like that all day.  A couple of hours after the incident, I noticed another stinger in the joint of my finger.  No wonder it continued to hurt so much.  It is now hours after the incident and my finger is still swollen and hurts.

We opened my hive to bad news - no queen.  The hive had requeened itself recently and we had noticed at the last inspection that the queen appeared to have gone off to get mated.  But she clearly did not succeed and I did not bring over a frame of brood and eggs every week as I should have until I clearly had a laying new queen.

We went through frame and frame and there was no sign of a queen.  Julia very generously gave me a frame of eggs from her hive and we put it into the queenless hive.  Hopefully they will make themselves queenright before winter.  I'll try to do a better job of paying attention to their status and add more brood and eggs if necessary.

You may notice the air-cast on my right foot.  I've had to wear it now for almost a month for a torn ligament.  It really has hampered my beekeeping.  I was so grateful for Julia who could bend her leg and pick up things, etc. in a way that I cannot with this air-cast on my leg.

And on the Longest Day of the Year, What did We Do?..........

We moved bees and laughed at ourselves the whole time.  Sebastian is moving and the two hives of bees at his house had to move as well.  Jeff and I were up for the job and the logical (it seemed) time in our busy lives to do it was Friday night.

Neither of us thought about the fact that Friday was the Summer Solstice and thus the longest day of the year.  The sun didn't set until 8:51!!!!!  I'm very busy these days and Jeff and Valerie have a baby who wakes them up every morning at 5 AM so neither of us were really full of energy at 8:51.

Nonetheless, we drove to Sebastian's house and outfitted Sebastian in my bee jacket, gloves and veil.  He and Jeff were to be the brawn of this move and I was the person manipulating the hives (and therefore getting stung).  Here are our steps:

1.  We lit the smoker - oops, well, I left the lighter at home, but Jeff had a lighter in his fantastic car storage compartment (more about that later!).  We smoked the bees to get the front porch stragglers to go inside the hive.

2.  We closed both hives up with screened wire with Jeff shooting the staple gun.

3.  We took the top two boxes off of the tall hive, set them on a bottom board and gave them a top for the trip.

4.  We strapped both hives tight together and bungee cord strapped the top box combo.

5.  Jeff and Sebastian loaded the three hive box combos into Jeff's car.   It was getting dark, but Jeff in his amazing car storage bin had two flashlights - a mag light and a small silver flashlight that I had put in his Christmas stocking a couple of years ago.

6.  Meanwhile an unhappy bee flew under my long-sleeved shirt, under my untucked t-shirt and stung me right in the tummy - ouch!  I'm so used to wearing a jacket that it never dawned on me to tuck in my shirt.

Note:  We left a hive box - a single box - on a bottom board with a top cover to allow any wayward bees to have a place to hangout.  I'll go back and move whatever bees are still there tomorrow.

7.  With three boxes in the car, we drove slowly to Sebastian's new house. 

8.  Jeff backed carefully into Sebastian's new driveway and we began the unloading process - we had to unload the cinder blocks and place them as well as the hives.

9.  When the hives were placed, we undid the straps.  Then I took off the top of the big hive to add the removed honey supers back.  OMG, those bees were all gathered at the top of the box, loaded for bear and wondering what the %$#@*** had just happened to their happy abode.  

I got stung on three fingers of my right hand - each finger getting several stings.

10.  For the do what I say, not what I did crowd, we would have been better served, I think, to remove the screen wire from the front of the hive before taking the top off, but I didn't think of that.

11.  We put grass on the fronts of both hives to help them reorient, leaned the inner cover from the fake hive against the fence to allow those bees to find their way home and headed for Jeff's car.

12.  In the car, I had Benadryl - the dissolve on your tongue kind - but no way to open the package.  In his magical car storage bin, Jeff had a sharp knife and opened the package for me.  

I'll go anywhere with Jeff in his car any time - that man is prepared for anything.....well, he didn't have a glass of wine and I sure could have used that, but he commented that it would be illegal to have that in his car.  

Good point.

A Bee-zy Sting-filled Day

This morning started with the dentist - no fun ever.  I had planned to go to the Chastain Conservancy to check on the bees there after my visit to the dentist.

I arrived at Chastain to discover that in my stress over the dentist, I had left both my camera and, more importantly, my smoker at home.  I live about 20 minutes from the site so I decided to go into the bees anyway, using hive drapes and trusting in my slow movements to keep the bees calm.

First I opened the drone-laying Don Kuchenmeister hive.  They have a queen cell but no queen yet so for insurance I wanted to move another frame of brood and eggs from our nuc that lives at Chastain.  I removed a frame to make room for the brood and eggs and promptly was stung on my left hand.  I covered the hive with drapes and opened the nuc.

The nuc is full of bees.  It has rained a lot over the past few days and the bees were none too happy with my intrusion.  A bee flew under my bee jacket and stung me through my t shirt.  Then as I removed the frame, checked to make sure I wasn't taking the queen, and shook most of the bees off of the frame, I got attacked full force.  I usually wear hiking pants to inspect the hives - they are loose and I rarely get stung through them.  This morning I had on jeans and got five stings on my legs during this process.

I closed up the nuc and headed for home, put on my work clothes and headed for my office (I do have a real job!).

I had a break in the afternoon and came home to walk my dogs.  I thought I might stop by the Morningside garden to see if the pesticide kill is still ongoing.  I stopped and walked up to the hive - no protective gear - all in my work clothes.  I walked up to the hive as I often do in my street clothes and took a photo with my phone.  There are a lot of new dead bees so the kill is still happening.

One of the bees really didn't appreciate my presence.  She began head butting me on the side of my head, the back, and finally she landed on my nose right by my nostril where she planted her stinger.

I've gotten stung once before in the nose and it was the worse sting ever. This one matched it.  I began to sneeze and sneezed once per second all the way to the car.  In the car I sneezed all the way to my house where I took Benadryl and put ice on my nose!

Then, lucky, lucky me, my dear friend Julia called me to tell me that she was going to pick up a swarm at Atlantic Station.  She doesn't want/need it and wants to give it to me.  I was thrilled but I wasn't going to be home from work until around 8 PM.  Julia said she would leave the swarm in my backyard and I could install it when I got home.

 Julia sent me photos of the swarm collection.  Atlantic Station is a pedestrian mall in Atlanta near Midtown.  Here's what she found when she arrived:

                                                                                                                                                                            I'm not sure if the blockade was for the bees or for something else.

You can see the bees on the center part bench below.  The are clustered on one front leg.

Here they are up close:

Julia brushed and cajoled them into a large file box that she covered with screen.

At my house when I arrived at 8, I found the bees clustered together in the box - about the size of one cat.

I set up a two box 8 frame medium hive with the insert in the screened bottom board.  I shook the swarm into the hive:

Julia, with all the brushing, wasn't 100% sure that the queen would have escaped without injury, so she suggested that I put in a frame of brood and eggs.  I took one from the package hive in my apiary and put it into the hive box before shaking the bees.  And then I got another sting on my finger.

While I was out there, even though it was getting late, I decided to check and see if the Mississippi queen I had installed in a nuc was released.  I opened the nuc and to my dismay, my nuc making was unsuccessful.  Most of the bees had returned to their original hives (I should have closed it up for 24 hours, but I didn't) and the queen was in her cage surrounded by a handful of bees, but not released.

I pulled the cage out, jumped into the car, drove to Ron's and put the queen cage in his queenless hive that we gave brood and eggs to on Saturday.  The bees seemed eager to meet her.  Her queen cage is the plastic item at about the center of the picture with bees crawling all over it.

And I got my last sting of the day....the best news of the day was that now that I have developed a tolerance for bee stings, my nose stayed its normal size for the rest of my day in the office!

Truth be told, I get stung all the time.  Jeff says that if I would just wear gloves......, but in fact I rarely get stung more than once in a round of inspecting five or six hives.  Today was rather constant - a bee-zy, sting-filled day.

Swarm Catcher and My Worst Sting Ever

Today I went to my friend John's house to purchase his newest bee gadget, a swarm catcher.  It's quite a deal.  Here's John's picture of himself with the swarm catcher:

It's a plastic water jug on an extending handle that will extend up to 16 feet.  You put the jug under the swarm and scoop it up and dump it into a nuc box.

This device is made with an extending pole (the most expensive part of the gadget), an empty water cooler sized plastic bottle, 60 minute epoxy, and a paint handle to embed in the epoxy.  I can't wait to try it out (I'm getting too old for ladders!)

Here is a YouTube clip of how it works:



After purchasing this wonderful device, I asked to see John's beeyard. I haven't been there before. His hives are tall stacks, filled with honey. As we gazed at them in as friendly a way as two beekeepers can, a very UNFRIENDLY bee literally flew up my nose and stung me just below my nostril.

Made me think of Winnie the Pooh floating up in the air near a bee hive in a tree, who says to Christopher Robin:

"Christopher Robin!"  he said in a loud whisper,
"Hallo!"
"I think the bees suspect something!"
"What sort of thing?"
"I don't know, But something tells me that they're suspicious!"*

Now I've been a beekeeper for six years and have now been stung countless times. This was the most painful sting EVER. It was three hours ago and my nose still hurts almost as much as when it first was given to me by that unfriendly bee. I'm sure tomorrow I'll have a fat lip. I don't care about that, but wish the pain would go away.

I stand out in my own beeyards all the time with no protection and don't get stung. Guess John's bees were suspicious!

*from Winnie the Pooh, E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York, 1950, p. 13.

Bee Mad, Bee Mean

On my way home from EAS on the 7th, I stopped in Rabun County and spent the night so that I could check on my bees there.  I didn't take my smoker with me on the EAS trip - it makes the car smell like a campout and I was traveling for a week.  I thought the Rabun bees are so gentle - I usually work them without smoke, so no worries.

Well, I went to the Rabun hive on Saturday afternoon.  They were orienting and it had been almost three weeks since I had been there.  Those bees were mad.  They didn't take kindly to my visit and stung me about three times.  So I packed it up and left until Sunday morning.

Sunday morning I returned, again with no smoker which was still back in Atlanta on my deck.  I opened the hive around 10 AM.  I always move slowly and gently around bees, but this time it didn't help.  Those bees were loaded for bear.  I immediately got stung at least 10 times just for lifting up the top cover.

I must have smelled like banana from the stings after that because I dropped my bee gear and moved rather quickly toward the car - bees stinging me the while.  One got inside my veil and tattooed my neck beautifully.  Another flew into my hiking boot and went to town with her stinger.  When I got back to the cabin and undressed I counted 12 stings, not to mention the 20 or so stingers in my jacket that didn't get me.

I wonder if they are hungry or just hot and bored.  I couldn't open the hive that weekend and simply stopped back by and picked up my gear on my way back to Atlanta.  I'm going up this Saturday for a smoker accompanied inspection and we'll see what gives.

I was relieved, if they are hungry, to notice the kudzu blooming in the trees above the hive.  Kudzu has a nectar that the bees like and it results in grape flavored honey.  See the purple blossoms in the center of the picture?

And that wasn't my only recent bee-mad experience.

Remember how my only hive left at home was queenless? Remember how I drove to Lula to buy a queen from Don K at Dixie Bee Supply? I brought her home and put her in the box (see below) and left for EAS.



When I got home from EAS, I hit the ground running. I teach at Emory in the summers and I had 63 grad students about to take my final exam, so I looked out at the bees but didn't open the hive. They looked happy.  I had left the robber screen on.  Bees were moving in and out.  Life in the hive looked fine from my sun porch and I had Emory students on my mind.

Two weeks after installation, I opened the hive to get the queen cage out.  She was not released.  OK, I thought, this must mean that there is still a queen in the hive.  There are lots of bees in that hive, no brood, very little stores, lots of pollen.  I examined the frames in the bottom box and finally, there she was.  The old queen was indeed in this hive that I had requeened!

Ooops.

Today Julia generously gave me a couple of frames from one of her Blue Heron hives and I added to it bees from my Blue Heron hive in a nuc box.

All of the hives at Blue Heron were light with few stores and little brood.  I fed my BH hive with a baggie of sugar syrup.

The weather in Atlanta has been horrendously hot, with no rainfall, and no nectar.  We took a frame of honey from one of Julia's Blue Heron hives to move it to the other one.

I picked up the honey frame to hand it to Julia, and was immediately attacked by the bees.  I'm sure they were thinking, "Hey, that's the only honey any of us have seen in a coon's age and you can't have it."  So six more stings later through my blue jeans and jacket, Julia installed the honey frame in the BP hive at Blue Heron (named for the oil spill).

I brought the nuc home ( I won't tell you the bad parts of the story - about how I didn't block the entrance of the nuc and there were bees all over my car - or how I remembered that it might be good to spray these bees from two different hives with sugar syrup, so I sprayed them in my car, coating the back of my Subaru with sugar syrup - or how in a huge hurry to get the uncontained bees onto my deck, I didn't take the time to unchain the gate and instead carried the nuc through the house to the deck, dripping bees onto the floor as I went).

I set the nuc up on my deck and put an empty nuc box on top of it and fed them.  I put the queen cage on the top bars beside the food.

Cross your fingers - after this fiasco of a bee day, that's certainly what I am doing.

Real Simple Doesn't Know a Bee - Public Travesty

In my current issue of Real Simple (July 2010) I was horrified to read an article entitled:  "Bug-Repelling Basics" on page 119.  Their web page brags that the article is "an expert guide on how best to protect yourself."

Reaction #1:  In a chart entitled:  "Know your enemy" they say of honeybees:  "Honeybees like the colors of flowers but they can't see red (so you're safe next to the geraniums)" - implying mistakenly that you are not safe anywhere else.  As beekeepers know, honeybees are very unlikely to sting you unless you are standing in their flyway right in front of their hive.

Reaction #2:  In that same chart they say, "Never swat at one or the whole colony might chase after you for several hundred feet to defend their nest."    REALLY?  Maybe Africanized bees in south Florida - but not in most parts of the country.

Reaction #3:  On page 124 there is a HUGE picture of a yellow jacket.  With an arrow pointing to the yellow jacket, the print reads:  "Bees don't discriminate.  They are just as liable to sting your dog as they are you......."

OMG - I am not a Facebook poster, but I am heading for their Facebook page right now to share my comments about promoting continued ignorance about the difference in yellow jackets and honeybees.

Feeding the Bees all over Town!

Because I am off to visit my daughter in Maryland this weekend, I wanted to feed all the hives that need feeding before I left. I opened the nuc with the poorly mated queen from Blue Heron and found that they had not touched the baggie I left there last weekend. I don't really understand why they have not, but I added a couple of slits to the bag and didn't replace it.



I am also feeding Aristaeus2 (the swarm hive from last year on my deck). I gave them a new bag as well. They had drained the bag from the weekend completely dry.



I went over to Blue Heron and opened up the Purvis queen hive. It's hard to put a baggie in without squashing bees. I've learned to lay it down slowly and gradually like a glacier moving over the frames to allow the bees time to move out from under the descending sugar syrup.



Now the baggie is fully down on the frames. I believe a couple of bees may have lost their lives in the process but it isn't as bad as it could be if I had cavalierly put the baggie on top of the frames.



Finally I went to feed the bees at the bee tree but that didn't go so well. The bee tree bees have gotten all possessive of the hive box. This should be a good thing but not for me and my health and well-being!

I climbed up the ladder with my jacket on and well zipped (remembering the last time last week when I got stung in the head under my unzipped veil). I did have my camera around my neck sticking the strap through the opening in the bottom of the veil.

I opened the top of the box and looked at the bees crawling all over the frames under the empty syrup baggie. I pulled off the syrup baggie and the bees came at my veiled head. One came in through the hole for my camera strap. I knew I didn't want to get stung before seeing my daughter for the first time in several months.

I climbed down off the ladder and moved away from the bee tree and zipped off my veil.
Big mistake. Apparently there were bees all over me. Taking off the veil gave them the opportunity they were waiting for and I suddenly had several bees in my hair, a bee in my nose, a bee under my glasses and a stinging bee above my eyebrow. I got the bees off of my face but the ones in my hair all found a way to sting me.

At the end I had about four stings in my head, one on a significant middle finger and one over my eyebrow. So now I headed off for Maryland with a face all swollen on the left side. Thankfully by the time the plane landed 24 hours after the sting, most of the swelling was gone.

Note to self: From here on out, take a smoker to the bee tree. Those girls OWN the hive box.

A Hodge-Podge Post

This post is full of random hodge-podge from my inspection and harvest this weekend.

Remember the hive where the comb was being built only on 2/3 of each frame in the super? I posted on the Beemaster forum, and I received replies suggesting that the bees would continue in this hive to build comb only in the front 2/3 of the box unless I took action. The recommended action was to turn the box 180 degrees so that the bees would now have the back in the front and the front in the back. I did this and now they are filling out the frames (see below).



I keep a stick in the back of my telescoping covers to add ventilation to the hives. When I do my inspections, the first thing I remove is the stick.....and then I lose it because I put it down just any old place. Today I decided to keep the stick in my hand until I take off the top cover and place the stick inside the telescoping cover before I take the hive apart. Seems simple, but it's hard to remember to hold onto the stick while I remove the cover. However, it pays off. I was much less frustrated since I could easily find the stick at the time to close up the hive, and I made myself remember to do it with each of the eight hives. Hooray!



Hyron, my first swarm, has been lagging behind the other hives. There is definitely a queen, but although she has a beautiful football shaped laying pattern, the swarm has not been building up as I would like it to. They haven't even considered the upper box. To find out how they really were, I needed to go into the brood box. I opened up the top box and set it on the inner cover.

I removed a frame from the brood box (the only box with any bees in it.) The bees were hot and not happy with me. Immediately they flew out of the hive and fastened themselves onto my jeans. It is so hot that I had opted to use my jacket with a veil that I love from BeeWorks. As a result I was wearing my blue jeans. There were at least 50 bees on my legs. I felt the stings start; put the frame against the hive; and headed for the house.

I could feel the stings through my jeans and tried to brush all of them off. When I finally counted the stings, I had 15 including one that crawled up my jeans and stung my knee and one that slipped under the elastic band on my wrist. Note to self: If I want to wear the veil for an inspection and not my full suit:
1. Don't inspect Hyron, the hot swarm hive
2. Wear loose jeans like my overalls instead of well-fitted jeans.

I don't know why this is such a hot hive, but I get stung every time I open it. Beekeepers will say that I need to replace the queen. I think I'm going to ignore this hive for a while and maybe replace the queen going into fall.

Meanwhile, like a true Southern woman, I felt inspired to feed these bees (we Southern women feed everyone). Maybe they haven't experienced me as hospitable as they expected here in Georgia. I haven't been feeding any of my hives because we've had a good nectar flow going, but these girls must be hungry. The jar which was totally full, had about an inch of feed taken from it since I installed. Maybe this will tame their spirits, but meanwhile it will be a cold day in ,.........before I open Hyron again.



While I was in the hives today, I took off about 9 frames of beautiful capped honey - some pretty enough to cut comb, all of it good for chunk honey. I took the wax cappings/crushings out of my filter from last weekend to make way for the new harvest. I washed it to get it ready for the solar wax melter. Here's the beautiful wax, ready to go outside and melt. There's a lot of it - will take about three different days in the SWM.



That's all for the hodge-podge post!

I saw Eggs with my own eyes today!

Hive inspection today. Purpose: Powdered sugar shake and determination if new frames or boxes are needed on either hive and to see how the feeding is going.

I opened Bermuda and there were scads of bees. They have brood in both boxes and I SAW EGGS! I saw them with my own eyes - not inside with the camera transferred to the computer. Isn't that the best? But I don't have pictures of the eggs I saw, however, I did see them in both hives. Maybe getting the sun behind me happened at just the right angle, maybe I was lucky, but I saw EGGS.

It's nice to know that there is a functioning queen in both hives.

Of course the price for this was that an angry bee from Bermuda stung me on the right side of my neck, right through my veil. It hurt worse than past stings. I immediately came inside, leaving the hive open, scraped out the stinger and put toothpaste on it. Plantain is supposed to be the best, but I don't have any in my yard, and I had read on the Internet that toothpaste helps. I also put one of the melt-in-your-mouth Benadryl strips in my mouth. I then quickly returned to the beehive to put the hive back together.

I did a powdered sugar shake on both hives. Here is a picture of the bees at the front of the hive after the shake. You can see the ones who had been powdered! There is also abee with big pollen baskets all full at the bee-end of the entrance reducer.

Miracle of miracles, I only saw a total of ONE hive beetle. The last few times I've seen lots of them. Now the hives are both much stronger and have probably invited the SHB to find another home. I certainly hope so!

Questions that were on my Mind as a First Year Beekeeper

As the beginning of my third year in beekeeping approaches (I started on Easter Sunday, 2006), I have been thinking about the questions I wish someone had answered for me as I got started.

One of my recent assignments was to give a presentation at the Short Course on "Bee-ing a Beekeeper" which was about my experiences and the stories of a panel of several others. I focused on the fun(ny) parts of Bee-ing a Beekeeper. I've thought about posting the PowerPoint presentation I did and then thought it wouldn't be the same without the stories to go with the pictures, but I may post it anyway.

In thinking about what I might address if I were asked again to talk about first year experiences, I generated (in no particular order) the questions that were on the top of my mind when I got started. They are:

• How hard is it to put together a hive box?

• What do you use to light a smoker?

• How do you put the bees in the hive and what are the scary parts?

• How do you deal with your neighbors?

• What is it like to be stung the first time?

• How much is the initial investment and do you have to have an extractor?

• Will you have enough wax the first year to make candles?

• What's the purpose of a hive inspection and how hard is it to do one?

• What are the most confusing parts of the first year of beekeeping?

I think I'll post on these questions over the next few weeks as many people begin their beekeeping experience for the first time. I've recently addressed how to build a hive box and how to deal with your neighbors. Stay tuned for posts on the rest of these questions.

A Bad Day in the Beeyard

I love Judith Viorst's book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. I had a day like that on Sunday in my beeyard.

First I saw the dismembered head of a tiny chipmunk on the deck rail - guess an owl left it there last night. The chipmunk has been a frequent visitor to my deck. That was a bad sign - I should have gone back inside then and there.

But I pressed on.

The only good thing that happened was that I stacked the boxes like Gerard did on the Botanical Garden hive inspection. His method was so much easier on my back.

Then the sad saga began. I planned at the beginning of this visit to the hives to add a frame of capped honey to the small swarm hive to make their lives easier. I've been sort of worried about this hive at the back of my mind because they haven't been building up like they should have. You'll remember that they made their own queen, (I even took her picture) but I never saw a great laying pattern from this queen.

Sad to say, she is no longer there. Maybe I killed her. Maybe the bees killed her, but she is not there. There were no frames of new brood anywhere. I felt sadder and sadder as I lifted each frame to many empty cells and no capped brood. OK, I thought, they did it before, I'll let them do it again. So my plan was to take a frame of brood and bees from Mellona and one from Bermuda and let this hive try again.
I opened Mellona and went into the medium box (#2 on the hive) and found a frame of very young brood. I shook the bees off of the frame into the hive and checked the remaining few bees to make sure I didn't have the queen. I put that frame in the hive. Then I closed that hive back up and opened Bermuda.

Bermuda is always an angry hive. They hang out on the front deck, impatiently every night, as if they didn't have excellent ventilation; they argue with me every time I open them; they don't want me around. They were not happy but I found a frame with tiny brood and hopefully eggs, shook the bees off, checked for the queen and then put that frame in the small swarm hive.

This all took place around 1 PM. I then opened up Proteus. I have been wondering about the queenright state of this hive and thought I should check about the life in the brood box. I haven't opened up the brood box in this hive in about three months. Boy, were they angry. I smoked the hive, I smoked myself, I smoked the air in front of me. Bombarded from every side, I was sweating from the Atlanta heat as well as a little anxious, but I kept on. Suddenly I realized that my veil was glued to my neck with sweat and a guard bee was implanting her stinger in my neck.

My most recent previous sting resulted in a strange reaction in that the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet itched more than I can imagine itching. My brother, a physician, said that I should visit an allergist and he is probably right. Meanwhile I had purchased Benadryl to have immediately available to me in the dissolving strip form, but at the moment of the sting, I didn't have it with me.

Proteus is open to the elements, the small swarm hive is open to the elements and I left it all and ran in the house followed by several bees to take care of the sting. I threw off the helmet and scraped out the stinger. My palms were starting to itch and I couldn't find the Benadryl. I had organized my computer desk the night before - it had been sitting right in front of my monitor but it wasn't there and I couldn't find it anywhere.

So I put my helmet back on and went back out into the yard and put Proteus back together and put the top back on the small swarm hive. I drove to the nearby grocery and got two packages of Benadryl so I wouldn't misplace it again. (I still haven't found the first one). The irony of it is that I didn't have anything sharp in the car and it would take an act of Congress to open the Benadryl without a pair of scissors or a knife (Note to self: keep Benadryl in hive tool basket with my Swiss army knife). So I still had to wait to get back home to take it and by then the itching had stopped.

Meanwhile around 2:30, I looked out and there is robbing type of flying going on around the small swarm hive. Usually I see a bee every 2 minutes or so come and go from that hive. There were fifty bees banging against the hive. The pictures below do not do justice to the amount of flying in and toward that hive.

I put the robber screen against that box - it isn't set up for the robber screen - but I thought that might help.

Ever since then I've been worrying. Did I bring one of the queens from Bermuda or Mellona in error to that hive and the bees are trying to get to her? Did leaving that hive open for so long invite robbing and killing? I closed the top which had been propped open and secured the robber screen with bungee cords and now I am worried.

Should I order a queen for this hive? Should I hope for the best and combine them with one of the other hives before fall? Was it wrong to put frames from two different hives into this one? Isn't that what they do when someone makes a nuc? Why would this be different?

In a nut shell, what did I do wrong that I can fix? If anything - - - - -

Bee-ing Stung

Last year I only was stung 3 times the entire year...and once was by a bee in the house.

This year I've stopped counting. I think it's a natural feature of being a beekeeper - comes with the territory, as it were. I also think the number of stings relates to how engaged I've gotten with the bees. Last year I was simply hoping that the hives would live through the season and through the winter.

This year I'm trying to get the bees to use natural cell size. I've given a small swarm a home in a nuc and have stolen frames of eggs and brood from other hives to help them get a good queen. I've had a two-queen hive and I've split it effectively into two hives. I've had a hive that barely made it through the winter that I've tried to nurture both to survive and to live in natural cell size. There's a lot going on in my bee yard.

So I shouldn't be surprised that I have been stung more. I've had stings on my knees twice this year. My forearm doubled in size one week from a sting when I didn't get the stinger out in time. Each of my thumbs got stung and each swelled up so much that about ten days later, the skin peeled off as if I had been sunburned. I've stepped on a bee in the house barefoot and been stung again this year. And on and on. I don't notice it as much any more, although the stings still hurt when they happen, still swell, and if I don't get the stinger out fast enough, still itch for about 10 days.

Tonight I was working in my garden in front of my house. Tomorrow is a watering day (we have designated days in Atlanta because we are in extreme drought) so I wanted to get the last of my plants planted and mulched before I start the sprinkler in the morning. It was 8:45 PM and getting dusky. A bee flew up my t-shirt as I was mulching and I guess she didn't like finding herself there. She began to buzz angrily and I headed for the house, stripping as I hit the kitchen door. Before I got my shirt off, she stung me on the upper arm. Then as I pulled the shirt off, I got stung again on the neck. I guess that means there were two bees under my shirt, although I only heard one.

And this sting set didn't even come from working in the bee yard......GRRRRR.

Thoughts on Getting Stung

Bees sting - that's part of being a beekeeper. However, beesuits, veils, smoke, and caution should keep stings to a minimum. All of my first year of beekeeping, I was only stung three times. The first time was when I stepped on a dying bee in the house and she stung the bottom of my foot.

When I get stung, I have what is called a "large local reaction." First the bee stings, I scrape the stinger out, and the site really burns and looks red. Then four hours or more after the sting, a huge area around the sting site gets red, swollen, hot and itchy. The "large" part of the large local reaction can be four to six inches long and wide. The swelling lasts for days, as does the itching.

Well, my second sting was much more dramatic. I was stung as I was watching the bees come in and out of the hive. The guard bee got me right under my right eyebrow. It was around 5 PM on a Sunday afternoon. The next day, Monday, I was scheduled to make videotapes with my Emory graduate students in which I had to be taped as well as the students. I woke up to find that my eye was almost swollen shut. I still had to teach my class, make the videos with the students and put on a good front. I told them I could only be filmed from the left side!

I don't remember the details of the third sting but I think it was on my knee.

In this my second bee season, I have already been stung four times. I think it is in part because I am not being as careful about having my beesuit and veil on when I do small things with the bees. When I broke my camera about a week ago, I got stung twice on my left arm and once on my right little finger. I didn't have my gloves on my hands and I was being careless. The stings on my left arm have just stopped being swollen and have just stopped itching.....ten or more days since I was stung. For about a week, you couldn't see that I had knuckles on my left hand because my hand was the size of a squashed tennis ball.

That brings us to today. This morning while I was talking to my daughter on the cell phone, I went out to sweep off the deck between the beehives. I didn't have on a veil, no gloves, no jacket and was wearing black (a no-no around the bees who then think you are a bear. ) As I was sweeping and talking, I was stung on my right elbow.

I had read that putting a real penny on the sting helps, so right away I put a penny on the sting. Sure enough, the pain went away quicker than usual. But now it is 10 PM, 12 hours after the sting and my elbow is swollen in an elongated six inch by three inch oval. It is hot and itches. And so begins another 7 - 10 day stretch.

I'd put a picture up but it seems too much like those horrible pictures of skin diseases that my brother and I used to look at in my father's medical journals!

Next time I sweep, I'm wearing my bee gloves!

Set up Weak Hive with a New Medium Box

The last time I looked into Bermuda, the weak hive, the bees were increasing in number and the queen was expanding her brood pattern to five or six frames. I removed a frame of honey from last year (we have a nectar flow on now from the tulip poplar, among other plants and trees) and replaced it with a frame with a starter strip of small cell.

It's about a week later and I think I should give them more space for brood, so I set up a second medium. I wanted to inspire these bees for small cell, so I put in nine frames of starter strips and one frame more or less in the center (with ten, where is the center?) of almost a full frame of small cell. I did this to give them more of a guide.


















Since I'm regressing this hive to small cell, I dated the frames so that I will have some idea when I replace them next year. My understanding of small cell is that the bees will have some trouble with it this year, regressing to smaller cell, but not to the natural cell size until one more "regression." To accomplish this, I'll need to replace brood frames again with small cell, so I dated these. Next year I can pull some of these 2007 frames and put in starter strips again, and my now much more adept bees will draw exactly what they need....assuming they live through the winter.

















Here is Bermuda with her new medium super. I installed it with great adventure. It was quite cold in Atlanta for April 9 this morning. When I went to the hive around 11 AM, it was still only in the high 40s. Ordinarily Bermuda has been a placid, slow moving hive, so I wasn't too worried about opening the hive just long enough to put on this box and replace the inner cover and telescoping lid.

I put on my veil and went to the hives, carrying my hive tool in one hand and my gloves and camera in the other. I set down the camera (and absent-mindedly, the gloves as well) and opened the lid of the hive. The hive was quiet, but when I removed the inner cover, they were no longer quiet and placid. The bees were thick on the top of the frames and flew out angrily and I was stung on each hand.

I hurriedly put on my gloves and in the process, trapped a bee under my glove, who of course also stung me on my left arm. This shocked me and I dropped my camera, breaking it.......costly beekeeping moment. The picture below is the last picture taken with the camera before it gave up the ghost.

















Oh, by the way, after waxing in the starter strips, I poured the remaining wax through panty hose (new) into a bread pan as a mold. The double boiler top in which the wax was melted still had wax residue on it. I poured boiling water into the pan and the wax now hardens on the surface of the water. I can pick it up and add it to my frozen wax cappings in the freezer. "Waste not, want not," the old folks say.

















Extra costs of beekeeping this week:

1. I had to buy a new chest freezer. My 30 year old freezer finally died, not of its own accord but because a critter in my basement ate through the electrical cord and by the time I noticed it wasn't working, it was past repair.
2. I have to get a new camera since mine died when I dropped it today.

Lesson learned: Put camera on strap around neck rather than wrist.

I needed a new camera - this one has been taking rather blurry pictures and just yesterday I was thinking that perhaps I should look into a new one. Also the one that I broke was only 5 megapixels -

I came inside, read reviews, and immediately ordered a new camera which should be here in about a week, but probably no posts before I get new pictures. I've ordered one with higher resolution and with an anti-shake feature to control the blur. It will be better in the end for both the bees and my grandbaby. However, I ordered an economic camera given that my camera is always subject to sticky hive stuff as well as the possible casualty of a fall from a high place.

This is a wonderful but more expensive hobby than I imagined!

Sting Saga

Previous to taking the honey from the beehives, I had only been stung once by my bees and that was when I stepped on a bee in my house who was dying on the floor. However, the first weekend that I took honey from the hives, I got stung on my knee when I returned the honey-dripping frames to the hives. I did this without my bee suit, wearing only my veil.

The sting on my knee hurt, but didn't look like anything until the next day when the area was swollen about the size of a silver dollar. It was very itchy for about two days and then went away.

This past weekend, my second weekend to rob the bees, I got stung again. I had been at an all-day choir rehearsal on Saturday and came home at the end of the day to let my dogs out before returning to choir. I love the way it smells when you stand between my two hives. In the warmth of summer, there's a rich smell of honey and bees that is absolutely wonderful. I often go out in the morning before work without my beesuit on to enjoy the smell.

So at 5 PM without my beesuit I went out to stand between the hives before returning to choir. There were three things wrong with this decision: I was wearing all black, I had had a Coke about an hour before, and it was the time of day when my bees are in orientation flights. The Internet forum posters all suggest that you get stung more when wearing black and when you have ingested caffeine.

I got stung right under my eyebrow. It hurt but I went on back to the party. The next day my eye was swollen shut and over the day, although I could open my eye, swelling developed that was an oval about four inches from above my eyebrow to below my cheekbone. This is called a large local reaction by those familiar with stings. One Internet site I read said that stings around the eye often result in "comic distortions of the face" which explains why this post has no pictures!

Now it's Tuesday and everything is finally back to normal after two days of no contact lenses and "comic distortion of the face."

But I'm wearing my bee veil for the rest of the bee season!

I've finally been stung

I've kept bees since Easter, 2006 - that's over two months now and I haven't been stung. Every morning I go out to the hives and stand between them and take pictures or just observe the bees. When I do this, I'm in my regular street clothes - no beesuit, no protection. Sometimes the bees send out a guard bee to send me back into the house, but most of the time they ignore me.

Every time I work on the hives in full suit, I end up with bees in the house. I imagined that they must come in on my beesuit, so I started taking the suit off outside on the deck and leaving it there for several hours before bringing it in.

My little dogs are in the yard all the time and have very long coats. Maybe the bees come in on their fur.

Inevitably I have bees in the house. Here's a picture of one on the paper towel roll. Often the bees are drawn to lights, just like moths. When I know one is in the house, it is often at the end of the day when only a light or two is on in the house. Then I'll hear the bee and know that she is near one of the lights that is on. They buzz and fly into the light as moths do.

Sometimes I can cover the bee with a glass and slide a postcard under the glass, trapping the bee. When that happens I can release the bee outdoors.

Tonight I came in from dinner with friends to find a bee buzzing around the kitchen lights and a box from Amazon on my doorstep. I ignored the bee and opened the box. In it was in fact a book I had ordered on beekeeping. I set the book on the counter and went to work on my computer for a while.

I returned to the kitchen and stood at the counter, reading the book. I took a step while I was reading and felt a sting in the bottom of my big toe.The light bulb bee had landed on the ground, dying, and I had stepped on her. She spent the last moments of her life giving me my first bee sting since becoming a beekeeper!

Obvious pollen on bees

April 25, 2006: The syrup jar is empty on Destin. When I added to it, I had a bee adventure.

An angry bee came into my hair buzzing like crazy. I shook my head to get her off, but that made her angrier, evidenced by her buzzing. After a while, and not wanting to be stung, I went inside with her in my hair and got the bee brush. I then proceeded to try to brush her out of my hair. Eventually it worked, but I spent about 10 minutes at this endeavor!

One reason the syrup jar on Destin empties so fast is that it appears to be leaking – there is a dark area on the cinder block below the jar, below the hive that appears to be soaked with sugar syrup. I’ll take it off and tighten the lid, but I will be relieved when I don’t need to keep feeding. I’ve ordered an interior feeder.

Bermuda doesn’t seem to be as active this morning as Destin – hope the queen is still there.

While I watched I saw several bees flying into Destin with obvious pollen collected on their legs!!!! See the bee with orange pollen on her legs at the right of the picture.