Neils
Holy <expletive!>
by
, 01-06-2011 at 10:40 PM (7612 Views)
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.