I was going to put up all sorts of pictures of transporting the hives and tell about how the bees were kept inside the hives and then I let them out peacefully and safely. But it all seems so long ago – three weeks, to be exact.
The beginning of my beekeeping has been remarkably easy; the bees have been surprisingly gentle about my presence. I fought my desire to open the hives up and look inside every day and only visited on the weekends, and I tried to keep them well fed for two weeks. Then all last week I was busy and it was always cold and rainy when I got home from work, so I didn’t get in there to feed them until today.
The last couple of times I haven’t done as well with the smoker. It worked beautifully when I put paper from the foundation on the bottom as the starter, with pine needles above. But last weekend I experimented with a pinecone – something I have read recommended – and the smoker was out by the time I got to the second hive. It was not a big deal, because everyone was gentle and mellow, and we had a good visit. I found both queens for the first time. I named one Queen Ambrosia, the queen of Apartment A, and the other is Clementine, the queen of Apartment C. There is no Apartment B for obvious reasons.
I was psyched last weekend to see both queens. All was well and I was pleased. I left them each with a feeder full of syrup and did not return until today. I was actually feeling puzzled that beekeeping was so easy, and wondered if the hard part is not until there is a disease or crisis like a bear attack. What else could go wrong?
Today was a very different visit from any previous. For the first time, when I visited Apartment A, I felt like I was nosing around in a dangerous place with stinging insects. I think that a few things were in play. I began with Apartment C, which is the weaker and more quiet hive, and the smoker was almost out by the time I reached Apartment A. Lesson one: improve my smoker skills. Lesson two: start inspection in the stronger hive, when the smoker is also stronger (at least until I get better at making the smoker last). They seemed more menacing from the moment I opened the top. Ordinarily, there are only a few bees wandering around the syrup and they’re mostly pretty happily sucking the stuff down. Today it was teaming with insects, who were gobbling down syrup for the first time in perhaps days. I got through the top brood box fairly quickly because they are barely beginning to draw the comb on that. I was feeling like the bees were angry at me in a way I had not felt before. I started pushing bees off my hand because I had the feeling they wanted to sting me rather than just to inspect as they usually do. One bee I looked at was standing still and raising her back end before I brushed her off.
The first sting was a surprising little nip on my arm. I looked down and saw a little white stinger hanging off my skin, and no bee. It took me a second to realize what happened and react. I know that the first thing to do is scrape off the stinger, because while it’s in your flesh it is pumping venom in one direction and sending “Sting this area” pheromones in the other. I scraped it and then pumped smoke on it, as I had been taught.
I sort of explored my feelings about my first sting, thinking like now I’m an official beekeeper and disappointed that I have no magic quality that kept me unstung forever. Not that I really believed I had any magic qualities, but I was sort of hoping. As I went back to work, taking a frame out of the hive to inspect it, I realized I was more anxious than I have ever been with the bees. Shortly afterwards, I thought a second bee stung me right on the end of my finger. Again I scraped and smoked the spot.
The really interesting thing about my feelings at that point was that I was angry. Deep inside, without any rational thought, I was pissed off at Apartment A. “I have always been so gentle with you guys,” I thought, “and I’m here to take care of you. Why are you hurting me?” Anxiously looking at the bottom box that was seething with bees, I realized I was unhappy with my bees for the first time. “I don’t need this shit,” I thought, as I tried to figure out how to get the burr comb off without pulling all the frames out individually.
I considered closing up shop and quitting for the day, but decided that if I left the burr comb, the bees with fill it with brood and then I’d be killing brood when I scrape it off next week. It had to get done during this inspection. But I didn’t have my gloves and the smoker was not having much effect, so I didn’t want to take out the frames. Instead, I took out the end frame to make space, loosened the other frames a bit, and just scraped off the burr comb, bees and all, as carefully as I could. I must have killed one or two bees in the process, but I was angry and I was no longer worried about the individuals (this from a person who carefully took three trips in and out of the house earlier in the day to return bees when I found them inside the feeders I had brought in to refill). I just decided that I needed to do it, and they weren’t behaving themselves so they’d have to deal with the consequences. To the extent that I could, I got the comb bits out as I scraped them, so as not to drop them down on bees below.
Then I put all the parts back together as carefully as I could, hearing one bee crunch as I put the top box on, and I got the hell out of there. I had changed the entrance reducer on Apartment C to give the bees more space to enter and exit, but I decided that Apartment A can wait for that benefit. When it gets cold and dark tonight, and I know they’re hunkered in, I’ll got out there and do it. I’ll use the hive tool rather than my fingers, and wear my gloves. Enough stings for one day.
Once I got inside the house, the adrenalin in my body reduced quickly, and I was able to remember that one of the reasons I chose to try beekeeping was to see if the inevitable stings would do my arthritis and/or tendinitis any good. I realized that one sting is right in the middle of my inflamed arm tissue and the other is on my most arthritic finger. So we’ll see.
My response to the bee stings was very interesting to me. I had not expected to feel angry. It was clearly a biological response from my body and had nothing to do with my reason – it was primal. I find it fascinating that, as 
rational as I may think I am, I am at base a biological creature, an animal just like my bees. Sure, I’m better educated than they are, but we share the nature of our responses. If I understand it correctly, bees won’t go out in the rain. So if it has been too rainy for them to forage and if they ran out of syrup a few days ago, then they were hungry bees this morning. And they still don’t have enough comb drawn for brood and food – this is probably proof that they ran out of syrup a bit ago – so they’re probably feeling crowded in there.
Lesson three: don’t run out of syrup. Those girls need their supplies!
P.S. When I went back to change the entrance reducer, I wore my gloves and hat, and I used the hive tool to pull out the reducer. The bees came at me aggressively, but I managed to make the change quickly and skedaddle.
The joke’s on them though. The next night when the foragers came home, they kept piling up on each other in the spot that used to be their door. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRzZ4YzY4jE&feature=g-upl
Two Hives on the Hill 