This is actually fascinating. (Though not your being stung!) My Mum is very interested in bees, and wants to persuade her fiance to keep honeybees, so I read this with so much interest. Beekeeping always seemed to me almost mystical and very complex!
Beekeeping is really fun and cool! :) It is worth being stung occasionally. If it interests you, I've posted lots of pictures and accounts from the installation and past inspections under my bees tag.
Your mum can give her fiance the assurance that he'll never know the bees are there, unless he wants to become involved with them. ;) They may become aggressive sometimes when opening the hive, but otherwise, they just do their thing. I always tell my husband that they're my kind of pet--they take care of themselves almost completely! :) We go into the hive once per week to check on them, and on the advice of our local beekeeping club, we're feeding them all summer (they recommended this for first-year beekeepers so that we don't have to guess about when to start feeding them for the winter), so we slosh sugar water into the feeder mid-week as well. They're really a joy to have (even after this afternoon, yes! :)
And important! :) There is a honey-bee society here, which is nice. I remember as a child going for a walk across the fields and up a hill to a place my uncle always called 'The Bees' (still does when he refers to walking that way) as there were four hives up there, just on the edge of a field. They were used, but yes, the bees must have been able to look after themselves as they were about two miles from any-one. I must look at your entries on them, thank-you!
I admire your calm reaction! Last year, a bee did get stuck in my hair, which naturally made her angry, and I was so panicked that she might sting me that I dropped everything I was holding (fortunately, it was only the smoker and the hive tool) and danced around while trying to open my hair bun and get the bee out
( ... )
The smoker was another part of the problem. Last week, a block of smoker fuel would not go out until being completely doused with water, so we didn't have the smoker since the fuel was still soaked from last week! It's now out drying in the sun ... won't make that mistake again!
I'm thinking your situation sounds much scarier! :D Bees in the face ... not fun. (I thought you might scold me for not wearing a veil, but it seems you weren't either! :D It was too hot for all that today, although I did put it on when we went back to finish putting the hive together, which took all of one minute, thankfully.)
I've been stung so many times (as a kid who wanted to be an entomologist and played with bees ... only four times as a beekeeper) that I'm really not afraid of it. I think that helped today. :)
I always feel bad for the bees who die, they think, protecting their hive. I wish I could tell them I mean no harm! :(
No scolding from me, no! Last year I always went "into the bees" with no veil - I was fresh from the beekeeping classes (where none of the instructors wore veils), and I only had two tiny colonies (what's the English words for the mini-colonies you form in spring when a strong colony might be in swarming mood so you take away two or so frames (with or without queen cells but definitely with eggs/larvae) and put them into a new box? The German word's the same as the one used when you take cuttings of plants for potting, Ableger - anyway, I had two of those) so there weren't all that many bees anyway. And, well, they were always very docile. So I was getting cocky
( ... )
I'm not sure the English word for it ... the term that's coming to my mind is nuc: a small colony with a queen, brood, some drones, and workers used to establish a new hive. But I don't think that's quite the same thing ...
I like to go into the bees with minimal equipment. For one thing, at this time of year, it is bloody hot out, and I'm honestly more worried about heatstroke than getting stung!
My arms are all swollen and itchy today. They don't hurt but they itch like crazy!
I've been stung more times than I can count--four times as a beekeeper--thanks to a fascination with insects when I was a kid. I find that the sting itself doesn't hurt, but the venom makes it ache afterwards. (All three of mine are currently aching. Meh.)
That's really fascinating! I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to keep my cool with a bee in my hair like you did!
I haven't been bee-stung since I was a small child, but I've had a bad reaction to wasp-stings as an adult (not serious, but definitely allergic) so I am probably allergic to bee-stings as well.
(BTW: Did you know that wet tobacco applied to a sting helps? Something I learned from my late M-i-L when our son was stung as a child.)
That's good to know! :) We might have to grow tobacco in the herb garden next year ...
I've been stung so much that I worry I will one day develop an allergic reaction. This happened to my uncle, who had been stung hundreds of times without a problem, then developed a reaction one day when he stepped into a nest while cleaning out a pasture. I love my bees too much to want to give up interacting with them because of allergies, so I'm hoping I don't develop problems.
Once I figured out I'd been stung behind the ear, that was actually calming ... the damage was done, so I just needed to bide my time till I could get her off of me! I think that oloriel's bee-in-the-hair story up-thread sounds much scarier than mine!
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Your mum can give her fiance the assurance that he'll never know the bees are there, unless he wants to become involved with them. ;) They may become aggressive sometimes when opening the hive, but otherwise, they just do their thing. I always tell my husband that they're my kind of pet--they take care of themselves almost completely! :) We go into the hive once per week to check on them, and on the advice of our local beekeeping club, we're feeding them all summer (they recommended this for first-year beekeepers so that we don't have to guess about when to start feeding them for the winter), so we slosh sugar water into the feeder mid-week as well. They're really a joy to have (even after this afternoon, yes! :)
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And important! :) There is a honey-bee society here, which is nice. I remember as a child going for a walk across the fields and up a hill to a place my uncle always called 'The Bees' (still does when he refers to walking that way) as there were four hives up there, just on the edge of a field. They were used, but yes, the bees must have been able to look after themselves as they were about two miles from any-one. I must look at your entries on them, thank-you!
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I'm thinking your situation sounds much scarier! :D Bees in the face ... not fun. (I thought you might scold me for not wearing a veil, but it seems you weren't either! :D It was too hot for all that today, although I did put it on when we went back to finish putting the hive together, which took all of one minute, thankfully.)
I've been stung so many times (as a kid who wanted to be an entomologist and played with bees ... only four times as a beekeeper) that I'm really not afraid of it. I think that helped today. :)
I always feel bad for the bees who die, they think, protecting their hive. I wish I could tell them I mean no harm! :(
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I like to go into the bees with minimal equipment. For one thing, at this time of year, it is bloody hot out, and I'm honestly more worried about heatstroke than getting stung!
My arms are all swollen and itchy today. They don't hurt but they itch like crazy!
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I haven't been bee-stung since I was a small child, but I've had a bad reaction to wasp-stings as an adult (not serious, but definitely allergic) so I am probably allergic to bee-stings as well.
(BTW: Did you know that wet tobacco applied to a sting helps? Something I learned from my late M-i-L when our son was stung as a child.)
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I've been stung so much that I worry I will one day develop an allergic reaction. This happened to my uncle, who had been stung hundreds of times without a problem, then developed a reaction one day when he stepped into a nest while cleaning out a pasture. I love my bees too much to want to give up interacting with them because of allergies, so I'm hoping I don't develop problems.
Once I figured out I'd been stung behind the ear, that was actually calming ... the damage was done, so I just needed to bide my time till I could get her off of me! I think that oloriel's bee-in-the-hair story up-thread sounds much scarier than mine!
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