Neils

Holy <expletive!>

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It's taken me this long to get my breath back.

My apiary buddy was away last weekend so asked me to take a look at his hives while he was off sunning himself in warmed climes. Even in the very south of Scotland here in Bristol the weather wasn't great and I might have had a few friends round for tapas and a wonderful game of football the night before. So it was a bit later than I anticipated by time I got to opening up the 8 hives that were there and figuring out how his record cards worked.

By time I got to the last colony, a recent swarm that turned up in one of our nucs a couple of weeks back, the clouds were coming in and it was about half six in the evening and very few flyers in evidence. Did I pay attention to any of that? No I did not.

I did pay attention to the bee that immediately stung me on my chin, the four or five that went up my trousers and the other 7-8 or that were poking their stings through my veil in addition to the what was starting to feel like a cloud of bees zooming off the frames at me. All from a 3 frame swarm!

You couldn't have put a crown board and roof back on top of a hive any quicker if you'd played Yakkety Sax in the background and sped the film up by 25%

(for those too young to remember:

)

All followed by a beekeeper tearing off down the path leaving a trail of smoke and angry bees in his wake

Needless to say they got marked as a 10 for agression.

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Updated 01-06-2011 at 10:51 PM by Neils

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Comments

  1. Jon's Avatar
    Has it got brood? Could it have been a cast with a virgin queen which subsequently got lost on a mating flight?
    Updated 02-06-2011 at 08:18 PM by Jon
  2. Neils's Avatar
    Nope. Once I got my breath back it dawned on me that we'd marked the queen in there a week or so ago, I'm not sure I saw her for sure as I didn't get through all the frames, the first one I held up deifinitely had Brood in all stages but I never got through all three of them before I bottled it and closed them up again.

    Thinking about it, we inspected and marked the queen a week ago without too much trouble, maybe these were just particular peeved about the weather but I'm glad they were only across three frames. I got stung on that one inspection more than from all my other colonies combined throughout the season so far!
  3. Jon's Avatar
    I got 20 stings in a small area of my right wrist filling apideas last week which was neither big nor clever.
    That's the most I have been stung for years.
    Unless there are mitigating circumstances I would mark that queen for culling.
    Imagine what it would be like if it grows to double brood.
  4. Neils's Avatar
    Don't worry, it is. That was way worse than the nature reserve colony and I've already marked that one for a new queen as soon as I can. That swarm has one chance to demonstrate it was me being stupid then it's had it.