Re-Queening and Getting Stung

Our new Queen arrived yesterday.  We met the seller in Clemson.  He was very nice and knowledgeable.  Since we are new beekeepers, and we had seen a couple of empty Queen cells in Hive 4, he told us to take the Queen and her attendants and place the cage on top of the hive body frames to see if the bees were going to accept her.  According to him, if there is a virgin Queen already in the hive, the bees will try to sting the cage with the new Queen.  To be honest, we THINK the bees were NOT trying to sting the Queen, so we placed her in the hive.  This bee business is not cut-and-dried for a new beekeeper.  There's a lot of art along with the science of beekeeping.  Were the bees facing the cage in an accepting manner or did they have their bottoms pointed toward the cage trying to sting it?  Who can really say?  Maybe we will be able to tell the difference with more experience.

My job was to hold the Queen and protect her as we traveled from Clemson back home.  She was a $30 investment that I was trying my best to handle with care.  All seemed well, we installed her in Hive 4 and then moved to Hive 3 to check the honey super.  No problems, everything was moving smoothly.

Then, we moved to Hive 2.  Pow!  Sting on the right hand!  Then, Pow!  Sting on the right foot!  I have worked the bees without gloves since the very beginning and prior to yesterday, I had only been stung once while inside the house rescuing my dog from a honey bee.  I suit up with a veil, but haven't had a problem with not wearing gloves, until yesterday!  When we went into Hive 1, the unthinkable happened!  Pow!  Stung again on the right hand.  The initial sting of a honey bee is a little painful, but it's the after effects that really cause the problems.  The photo below is 24 hours after the initial stings on my right hand.

I'm sure that I'm not allergic to honey bee stings, but I did a Google search just to make sure the swelling wasn't excessive.  Turns out that I'm in good shape.  Many folks swell all the way to the elbow when experiencing a honey bee sting.

My husband thinks I should be more careful and begin wearing gloves, but I am going to try it one more time without gloves to see how things go.  I'm beginning to think the pheromones from the Queen were on my right hand because I had carried her cage for at least 2 hours.  Maybe the bees were just in a bad mood.  Who knows?  I will be happy when the swelling subsides.

3 Weeks Away From the Hives

We left for a trip Out West on July 4th and the bees were doing fine.  Our friend, Bev stopped by and texted these pics on July 17th, almost 2 weeks into the trip.  We returned home late on Tuesday, 7/23, and checked the hives on Wednesday, 7/24.  The colony of bees in Hive 4 (in the bottom photo, hive 4 is on the left-hand side) were acting a little crazy.  They were flying around and around the hive.  On Thursday, 7/25, my husband went into the hive and there was no Queen, no larva, no pupae, no nothing.  Just a whole lot of bees with no leader.

We called our local bee suppliers and neither place had a Queen in stock.  However, the SC Beekeepers were holding their annual meeting in Clemson and one of the suppliers gave me a gentleman's name and number.  When I reached him by phone, he was at the beekeepers meeting and told me that he would have a Queen for us to pick up on Friday at the Clemson event.

I'm learning that you can never second guess what will happen with bees.  They looked fine when we left and they looked fine 2 weeks into our trip.  After checking everything out, it seems that the Queen took off for vacation when we did.