My First Stings

Got stung a couple times Sunday evening...it was my own fault. I know that the best time to open up a hive is in the afternoon of a nice sunny day with little wind...basically when most of the bees are going to be out foraging for nectar and pollen. Sunday evening it was still pretty nice but the sun was definitely setting and there was a bit of a breeze. Even so, I came up with the bright idea of seeing if the bees might like some pollen patty that I had purchased.

To use this on the hives, I would first have to take off the hive-top feeder I use. Once that is accomplished, the hive is completely exposed from the top. The next task was to put on a shim which would allow room for the pollen patty on top of the frames and under the feeder.

Anyhow, the bees did not appreciate me taking their feed from them... As soon as I took the feeder off, I got stung on ankle through my sock which was fortunate because I think the sock pulled the stinger out rather quickly. The offending bee was probably one that was on the feeder when I set it in the grass. The second sting was on my wrist. It was at this point that I realized I should probably get a veil and gloves... So I ran up to the house and put those on real quick calling myself all sorts of names on the way. I have now left the hive wide open...another no-no. Oh well. What's going to happen right? I was coming right back...

Thankfully nothing did happen. I was able to put the shim on, the patty in, and replaced the feeder with no further excitement. This process did stir up quite a bit of excitement...so I decided I'd better wait for a sunnier day to do the other hive.

It has been very difficult for me to curb my curiosity and not go queen hunting. I am really worried that the bees assassinated the queens. My only hope is that the queens picked up the scent of the other bees enough while they were in the same packages together. If the weather is right on Wednesday, I hope to go in and look for some eggs. If there eggs in the cells, then I know I have an egg layer at least. Of course, this could be a worker laying in the absence of a queen...these eggs will only develop into useless males. If it is a queen laying, then there will be only 1 egg/cell and the eggs will be positioned in the middle of the cell. If it is a worker laying, then there could be two eggs/cell and the positioning will be messy.

If I find that the queens have been killed off, I will have to order replacement queens. Hopefully I will have better luck (or perhaps a better PLAN!) for introducing the queens!