#15. There's bee stings...and then there's BEE STINGS!

Well, I knew it had to happen sooner or later...

Last week I did my second hive inspection, and I started with the red hive.  As Ray Lackey had predicted, swapping the locations of the stronger (red) hive with the weaker (yellow) had resulted in red hive field bees relocating to the yellow hive.  And the yellow hive has really been buzzing since then.  So much so, that it is now even more active than the red hive used to be.

I wanted to start my inspection with the red hive to make sure that their forces weren't too weakened to recover their strength.  And besides, I had never seen the Red Queen, and I thought it would be a good idea to try to track her down.  When I opened up the hive I was a little disappointed, but not really surprised, that the bees hadn't started drawing comb in the top brood box I'd added the week before; they really need to fill this box with brood and food before they will begin to produce excess honey.  Of course, I added that box and then promptly tricked half the Team Red field bees into moving over to the yellow hive, so I guess they didn't have the manpower to develop the penthouse apartment.

So I pulled the whole top box off and concentrated on where the action was.  And there was A LOT of action.  The foraging activity may have dropped off, but the house bees' brood-rearing action was going strong.  They still hadn't done anything much with the frames I'd added, but the original deep frames that came with the nuke were teeming.

The 3 frames on the left are the ones I added to the original nuc frames.  The next 4 frames are packed.

When I started pulling frames, I saw where all the energy was being directed.  The bees were building 'free comb' in the space created between the bottom of the deep frames and the bottom of the hive.  Eventually, theses frames will be replaced with frames that fill the area more efficiently, but until then, hive examinations create a real mess, because you break off pieces of comb when you lift out the frames.  It was very distressing - to me and the bees - to see a huge chunk of wax comb, now with brood exposed and vulnerable, fall to the bottom of the hive as I lifted one of the center frames.

Broken comb attached to the bottom of one of the 'deep' frames

I was so intent on finding the Red Queen that I didn't notice just how angry the bees were becoming.  Who could blame them?  I was breaking up their brood area and appeared to be a serious threat to their queen.  And I guess I was kind of cavalier since I was fully suited up.  What I didn't count on, though, was that bees can sting through standard gardening gloves.  This I hadn't anticipated.  So two of them got me on the top of my index finger.  I quickly put everything back together and moved out of the area before I removed my glove and scratched out the stingers.  Lesson learned - next time I go back to leather gloves.  Still, the stings didn't hurt very much, and I was thrilled that I had been able to locate the Red Queen.

  I've drawn a red square around the queen, upper half of the photo.  

Unfortunately, you can really only see her abdomen.

I let the bees calm down for awhile and then went to the yellow hive.  I decided not to pull frames, because I didn't want to break brood cells and destroy comb as I had in the red hive.  What I did do was pull off the cover and feeder and add another brood box.  I could see that the bees hadn't yet moved into the frames I'd added when I did the nuke transfer, but there was a lot of action, and the center frames looked packed.  Even though they didn't look like they need it yet, I'm glad I added the extra box because yesterday Ray emailed a warning to the class that we must stay one step ahead of the bees - one of his students' new hives has already swarmed; that is, most of the bees left with a queen to establish a new colony elsewhere because they felt overcrowded.

I really felt as though I'd dodged a bullet with my bee stings.  Until the next day, that is.  It took a full 24 hours, but my hand blew up like a balloon and took a good 4 days to get back to normal.  But, hey, I think I remember reading that bee stings are good for arthritis.  

Turns out I really did dodge a bullet.  The day after my bee sting incident, I was down the block visiting my friend Mikey, a retired NYC firefighter.  His friend John, another ex-firefighter was at the house too, and he was curious about my beekeeping exploits.  He told me he has a friend, Rob, in East Hampton who keeps bees, that he had lost his colony over the winter and had just replaced them.  The story sounded familiar, and I realized that I already had Rob's contact information - another mutual friend had told me what a great guy he is and that I should contact him.  I told this to John, and said that I hadn't yet connected with Rob.  So John says, 'Yeah, well I guess you heard about Rob's bee sting incident, right?'  I told him I didn't know what he was talking about, but when he told me the story, I ran right home and emailed Rob, and he confirmed the details.

Rob was doing a hive inspection.  He was wearing a veil, but it must not have been tied down properly, because a bee made her way inside the veil.  Before Rob could remove the veil to release her, the bee flew up into one of Rob's nostrils.  --  I'll just let that sit with you for a second or two  --  According to Rob himself, he panicked, and reflexively did the worst thing imaginable - - - he inhaled.  Through his nose.  He sucked her right into his sinus cavity before spitting her out his mouth.  The problem was that while she was in his sinus cavity, she stung him.  According to John, Rob's head blew up like a pumpkin.

But Rob still loves his bees.  This winter, when marauding deer careened through his bee yard, they took down the hive.  By the time Rob found it, on the ground and opened up, all the bees were gone.  So he's just got himself a new colony from a local Long Island breeder and is looking forward to another season of beekeeping.  I have to say, I'm not so sure I'd be so ready to get back in the saddle after something like that.