It’s warming up and the bees are starting to come back out and rob the neighbours plants of their pollen.
I had to requeen a particularly aggressive colony last year and cracked them open for first inspection and adding supers today, and I didn’t get dived at once, which was nice.
Are there any other backyard (or even industrial) beek nerds here? How many colonies do you have? What’s your setup?
I don’t keep bees, but my landlord does. And I like to go and watch what he’s up to when he’s messing about with them. I go unprotected, with short sleeves etc, standing in a swarm of bees like that. Never get stung. Bees won’t do anything to you if you’re not flailing about like a lunatic.
Haha, yeah you’re right for the most part. When I first started I only wore a veil to protect my face and my colonies were really gentle.
Inspections were a lot easier without the thick gauntlets getting in the way, but somewhere down the line I learned that they have mood swings and can be aggressive over a rather large territory for seemingly no reason.
My first sting was about 30m away from the hives, as I was feeding the chickens. Stinger stuck right on the top of my head.
When they are happy though, they are fascinating to watch up close, right at the entrance, landing & taking off, dragging out their dead and any intruders or evicting the poor drones.
I have a garden. And that’s full of bees. Also never got stung there. I have had a very good track record with bees all my life. Only got stung once in my life, when I was 6-7 years old.
I am much more wary about the wasps. Can’t stand those things.
Yeah, wasps can be a nuisance and bee hives attract them. They’re after the brood at this time of year, for the protein, but wasp traps with meat bait work really well to control them.
I usually kill a few females building a nest in the beginning of the season myself (wasps, not bees). They tend to want to nest in my sleeping quarters (I sleep in an open-air loft-type of thing during spring-summer-fall season), so they’re an easy target for me. I haven’t got bitten by one yet, but I imagine that can be painful.
How many bee colonies do you have?
At the moment I have 2 active colonies, which I’m going to split shortly before swarm season.
I have hives enough for 6 but I found it was a bit too tough to manage that many at my skill level and with the free time I have.
I’m finding between 2-4 is comfortable enough for me.
