A thorough bee day

I had a big bee day, doing all things bee.  Building frames and parts, hive inspection, expansion, and more.  They needed all kinds of things, including a yard cleanup.   I doubt I would have lost that swarm if I was on this a few days earlier, but what’s flown is flown.

Now  all the hives are set on concrete pads, all the wood scraps are cleaned up, and the bee yard looks more classy bee apartment structures, less bee shantytown.  They even got their hive names labeled. I’m pleased with the look now.

Both Violet and Pansy had a short move.  I had to shift them a couple feet to get them on the pads (while disassembled down to the last super, so that I could lift them).  For over an hour, there was a swirl of bees in the space where Pansy hive had been – the workers returning and finding the hive missing from where they expected it to be, then noisily drifting over and discovering it.  Where’d everyone go?!  Oh, there y’all are.  Phew.  Man, my gps must be off today.  Yours too?

Violet adjusted better.  I did a comprehensive hive inspection, checking every frame  on all the hives, which takes quite a while for a tall hive.  Amazingly, I didn’t get stung at all in all that shifting and working within a cloud of bees, and killed very few individuals.  Only one for certain. They were very patient, although there was a tense moment when I tried to use the bee brush and they lost their minds.   They hate the bee brush with a berserker level  intensity.  I should probably just get rid of that thing; it’s dangerous to be associated with.  One swipe!  I stood perfectly still, holding it at arms length and wincing while the bees went nuts stinging it and making rage sounds, then put it away and resumed being patient when they subsided.  Phew!  We showed that brush.  That brush won’t be showing its bristles around here anytime soon.

They’re all thriving.  Violet has also grown out of their terrible habit of wildly building burr comb and gluing all the frames together, which is very nice.

All this and I finished putting them all back together minutes before the sky started to drip!