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Author Topic: Finding Queens and getting Stung!  (Read 1043 times)

Offline mdax

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Finding Queens and getting Stung!
« on: July 29, 2013, 08:35:17 pm »
The inspection of hive 1 was going great.  
There were a few small hive beetles behind the frame arms and I was smashing them to the clear happiness of surrounding bees.   The bees were cheering my name and happily crawling on my fingers.  

Checking out frames with the optivisor and I could see details of eggs, capped and uncapped brood...and there she was, the queen!

I was super happy to have found her, however I didn't have my queen clip on me and wasn't able to mark her.

I managed to get a video showing the queen.  

Video of Finding Queen

I reassembled the hive and did a quick sugar treatment.


Since that went so well i figured, heck, why not inspect hive 3, my ten frame with two supers...what could go wrong?

I placed the super on the stand between hive 1 and 2...without a top or bottom...so you know, the bees start getting robbed but it's fine, because I'm busy with the bottom super having a great ol time looking for signs of the queen and don't notice anything wrong.

The bees were super friendly.  I removed 6 frames and found plenty of evidence a queen was laying.   I assembled the bottom super and was feeling super confident, using little to no smoke.  Once again bees were crawling on my hands and licking sugar off me, the sun was shining, it was like a disney movie, everything was going great.  

...until i looked right and noticed the super, surrounded by lots of angry bees.  It was clear the bees were very unhappy about the situation.  
I thought, I'll just go over there and quickly move them back....there was a quick nagging feeling that may not be so smart...naa it'll be fine.

bam bam bam three stings to my right hand, almost instantly as I started to pick it up.

While walking away I thought of ways to cover the supers while doing inspections.
Went and got some gloves and a suit, came back, smoked them good and reassembled the hive.

I'm thinking that next time I'll have a screened bottom board and top cover ready to stack the supers and not spend 25 minutes with the hive torn apart in some sort of happy place with my bees.
« Last Edit: July 29, 2013, 08:40:09 pm by Robo »

Offline Steel Tiger

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Re: Finding Queens and getting Stung!
« Reply #1 on: July 30, 2013, 01:14:24 am »
I always put the on the ground, upside down, to the side of the hive. Put the inner cover on top of that. Then stack the supers on that. I'm thinking of building a short, collapsible table. Then I can set the hive bodies on that and cover with the inner cover.
 It's always neat to accidentally spot the queen while doing inspections.

 

anything