Operation Cleanup.

A Better Day for Bees and Bee Keepers 

Those of you who read last night's blog will know that I messed up. I messed up good and proper.
This morning the sun was shining and Alex rang while I was looking out of an upstairs window watching the stalwart bees from our hive taking advantage of the warmer dryer autumn day to stock up on pollen and any nectar that might still be going.

Alex agreed to come and have a look at what had happened. He brought a porta bee escape for the crown board (the board between the brood box where the main colony live and the super which is another tier used in the summer for honey frames and in the autumn and winter for any additional feed the colony might need) so if I accidentally trapped a bee in there again it would be able to get back into the brood box. He also brought a spare veil and bee suit for Bob so next time we have a problem we can work together.

When we removed the roof from the hive the feeder was still absolutely full of bees. They were doing their best to clean up all the crystalised sugar. There was no liquid syrup left and really only a very small amount of the dried. Alex lifted the feeder off and exposed the hole in the crown board and then using his hive tool levered the crown board off. The hive was incredibly full and packed with stores. There were new burrs of honeycomb all over the underside of the crown board and the tops of the frames. We had to scrape a little off because otherwise there was too much danger of squishing bees.

Alex put the scraped honey comb in front of the entry to the hive, so the bees could recycle it, and then emptied the bees from the feeder directly onto the tops of the frames. On inspection there were only 4 or five bees stuck in the syrup. We were able to free one but the other few were already dead. Bees are incredibly hygienic and careful about removing their dead from the hive so it is possible that they had already removed a good number of dead bees but there did not seem to be many outside the front of the hive.

Well actually there were loads of bees outside the hive but they were busy collecting the honey from the burr comb to reuse so that robbers from other hives and wasps wouldn't be alerted too quickly. We were able to tidy up the super, cover the exits without a bee escape and put the lid back on.

I dont know how people get great pictures of bees but they definitely have better cameras than I do!

In short my ill thought out attempt to help the colony yesterday seems to have less lasting impact than I feared. Working in the sunshine with someone who could tell me what to do was so calming. It was a positive joy to take out the grubby feeder and to satisfy myself that no lasting damage was done to the bees.

I now know that I need a bigger bee suit. Comfort while working is really important. I MUST ensure i've zipped up the front of the suit all the way and that all the velcro is tapped down because then I won't find I have a bee trapped inside my suit. I also know that If you have gloves that fit and you trust to be thick enough you can do the jobs that need doing quickly and without fear of being stung.

My mother always said that mistakes were inevitable but they were only unforgivable if you learned nothing from them. I've learned a lot, mostly about my limitations but I'm not quite ready to forgive the silliness of rushing in to something without the right information, tools or support.

Yours, very relieved
Katherine