odd find in the hive

[wildbeekeeper]

So I was checking on one of hives to see if i needed to add another super and I  pulled one of the shallow frames to see if it was capped.....and I noticed something odd......it was a .22 bullet that had mushroomed, meaning it had been shot into the hive.  I asked my dad who was standing there figuring he took a crack at a garden eating groundhog and missed but upon further investigation the shot appears to have come from the road running past my parents place as you can see the angle of the entry hole on the outside of the hive.  The neat thing is that it went through the hive body, through two partial frames of honey and lodged in the third honey....you can see it in the picture.....I left it there to see what the bees do with it :)   despite my bitterness about some jerk shooting at my hives, I thought it was pretty cool!

http://picasaweb.google.com/srepasky/BulletHoney?feat=directlink

[johnnybigfish]

That sux with somebody shooting at your hives!!
I live in the country and Ive considered putting 2 garden hives out front of my shop about 2 hunderd feet from the road, but i ALWAYS REMEMBER HOW MUCH OF A JERK i WAS WHEN i WAS A KID!...i'M FIGURING THAT SOMEBODY WOULD DRIVE BY AND SHOOT MY HIVES JUST FOR THE HECK OF IT....and theres no telling where the bullets might go! It could go into my boat...or my shop....or maybe even thru the woods into my house :(....so.....no hives out front.....at least not yet.
your friend,
john

Oh yeh...those were really good pictures too! Nice light on the comb!

[Scadsobees]

Not the first or the last time some yahoo will think they're having fun by destroying somebody's property. :-x

Would honey be corrosive to the lead, leading to contamination?

Nice looking honey, though!! :)

[riverrat]

I had a hive shot up a couple of years ago. Caught the kid that did it but nothing came of it other than myself talking to the parents. it happened to be a son of the land owner I had the hives on. My guess would be the bees will propolise it and seal it off. I would remove it to keep the lead out of the hive. but who knows mayebe it will drive the shb out :)

[JP]

I have to confess, I had trouble looking at the bullet, cause the honey looked so good! I meant to say the "bullet" honey looked so good. Nice pic! Had a lawn mower handle embedded in a hive I removed. Was pretty cool as well.


...JP

[Rebel Rose Apiary]

It will not be so cool if you have hunters shooting up your hives in the dead of winter with shotguns! I had some trespassing hunters do just that last year to some hives that were in the woods very close to my house. There were tracks in the snow where they had taken a boot heal to some of the hive bodies and kicked them over. These were not kids, but BIG footprints. They had shot the hives up close and ruined a lot of them beyond repair. I lost a lot of good colonies.

I agree about removing the .22 as lead is very soft and will leach out into the honey. Lead poisoning is not anything to fool with. I have a few hives that like to chew....if there were a bullet in one of them, they would most likely chew it up and spit it out.

Nice looking comb!

Brenda

[wildbeekeeper]

I went back and removed the bullet today after thinking... why leave it in there anyway? :)  It will be a nice keepsake....and thank you for the kind comments on the honey.... my bees worked very hard for it! :)  I dont think i will have a problem with vandelism where my hives are... in fact i think that whomever shot wasnt aiming at the hive but at something else.....we have a bit of a problem with wildlife poaching around the area and I have a feeling they were taking aim at one of the nice bucks running around the property.....how they were going to retrieve it and get it past the back door without finding lead embedded somewhere they dont want it is another question! :)

[hankdog1]

I wouldn't blame it on kids right off.  I had a brother of a neighbor that liked to shoot my dogs because i wouldn't full fill all his requests for free labor.  At least that has came to an end after he messed around with another neighbor and got one of his horses shot and killed.  But i guess what i'm getting at is adults can be just as bad if not worse then kids with doing stupid stuff.  I am glad that you didn't have any more damage then what you did.  I'm amazed it made it's way through the outside of the box to the inside.  I wouldn't think a 22 shell would have enough powder to go through the wood.  Learn something new everyday though.  Good luck with your bees and hopefully with any luck ya won't have anymore driveby bee shootings lol.  Darn those rival gang members hehehe.

[beedad]

so about three frames of honey is like Kevlar...very nice.

[Rebel Rose Apiary]

so about three frames of honey is like Kevlar...very nice.

I am glad that they had us wearing Kevlar in the Army~! A helmet of honeycomb would have been a mess!  :evil: At least we would be the sweetest platoon there was though! I could not resist!

Brenda

[rickomatic]

We've all heard of bees "robbing", but I think this is the first time I've ever heard of bees involved in armed robbery.    ;)