hedgerow pete
Queen Bee
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2009
- Messages
- 3,648
- Reaction score
- 16
- Hive Type
- National
ever had one of those days, try mine
Ok people before you start to read this I suggest a box of tissues to wipe away the tears of laughter.
For those who don’t know I am working in Milton Keynes at the moment so I don’t get much time to do much during the week the weekends are sometimes worked to, so when this morning comes along I decide to get up with all enthusiasm and off to the bee shed.
So there we are going through a hive when we start to have problems with the smoker going out all the time. A bad idea is to do as I did and to add a cap full of white spirit to the cardboard, It still won’t light again and again till eventually we are now talking Molotov rather than smoker, when it does go up it takes the plastic gloves I am wearing with it. So off to the shed to start again this time with sore hands. New gloves on and away we go, the smoker has gone out again so it gets launched out of the shed and lands on the grass and then sets fire to said grass. Lots of smoke this time so much so I am choking on the stuff.
We go to shift a super and end up dropping it. So what are normally iffy bees are now very upset and showing it.
So after we finish that one we go to the next one which has already decided to prepare the full meeting gift for when I lift the lid. I get it both barrels and all during the inspection too.
Next up is screwing a couple of plastic coloured boards to the outside of the bee shed. So first of all we pull the box of screws off the shelve and drop most of them onto the floor. We collect some and the wrong sized screw driver because I can’t find the proper one and off we go to the angry bee shed. Trying to do screws with leather gloves it bad enough add to that a hand full of bees to and it just takes ages.
We end up dropping the box of screws on the floor when we get stung and then bend over to find them and gets stung again this time on the bum, wonderful!
I have also buried my hammer somewhere at the allotment but I found where my son had dropped my Stanley knife, yep it was in the end of my finger when I found it,
So we give up and go to the out apiary. Cars loaded up and the trailer with the flat tyre is also loaded up, no I did not notice until I was on my way down the road
We arrive to the farm gate to find a new padlock for it fitted so we then have to drive to the farm house to get another key, when we get there we find the farmer and his wife have gone out for the day and his 30 year old son is struggling to calve a cow so I offer to help. They seem to use a large stick that’s like a ratchet thingy with one end attached to the cow the other I am holding. Any way after a lot of grunting one new calf is delivered, that’s when I realise I am now covered in everything and I smell, and I mean I really DO SMELL. Any way new key and off I go.
When I get to the gate I find I have the wrong key so another trip is made another key found and in we go. My bees are at the side of this field with a small 6metre wide strip all the way along which I drive the 500 metres to the hives. Except for today, today I find 300 tonnes of farm sludge waiting for me.
So 400 trips later we have everything shifted by the four bee hives, then when we are having a fag and getting composed do we realise that the bees are all bright yellow and working on osr, deep joy, not, where they are finding it from I don’t know but they are working it big style
All four hives are extremely angry and chocka with swarm cells and no brood, just stores.
Whilst I am going through them cleaning up everything and adding supers doing splits etc I have a hive swarm on me. No problems 20 yards away is an empty nuc box just in case, actually there are four nearby so I don’t worry, and I wander over pick up the nuc box to find it’s very very heavy. So back to the car and I come back via four trips with another hive set. I empty the nuc into he hive and go to collect the bee swarm. Only to find it’s sat right next to the largest hornets’ nest I have ever seen, great
3 stings later and another swarm are collected again. So now I am getting fed up and as grumpy as the bees. Using supers and no floors I manage to cobble together enough frames and boxes to house the nuc caught swarms. None of which are mine as they are the wrong colour. So, this is now 3pm and I have to go home get more frames made, get the spare hives in the trailer, get back to the farm sort the things out and she wanted to go out to night so now I am in the dog house because I love my bees more than her.
I have also used up every spare floor and cover board and roof and all my brood boxes so next week when I get home from work its tea time and pass the post and the screw driver please darling.
It does also mean that I have a load of brood frames with crystallized honey in them and I have gone from four medium colonies to 12 nucs in one day and all are too small to produce any crops this year. And the three of them are very badly affected with no brood or eggs and so I think either a bad queen of no queen.
And to think we do this as a hobby we love!!!
Ok people before you start to read this I suggest a box of tissues to wipe away the tears of laughter.
For those who don’t know I am working in Milton Keynes at the moment so I don’t get much time to do much during the week the weekends are sometimes worked to, so when this morning comes along I decide to get up with all enthusiasm and off to the bee shed.
So there we are going through a hive when we start to have problems with the smoker going out all the time. A bad idea is to do as I did and to add a cap full of white spirit to the cardboard, It still won’t light again and again till eventually we are now talking Molotov rather than smoker, when it does go up it takes the plastic gloves I am wearing with it. So off to the shed to start again this time with sore hands. New gloves on and away we go, the smoker has gone out again so it gets launched out of the shed and lands on the grass and then sets fire to said grass. Lots of smoke this time so much so I am choking on the stuff.
We go to shift a super and end up dropping it. So what are normally iffy bees are now very upset and showing it.
So after we finish that one we go to the next one which has already decided to prepare the full meeting gift for when I lift the lid. I get it both barrels and all during the inspection too.
Next up is screwing a couple of plastic coloured boards to the outside of the bee shed. So first of all we pull the box of screws off the shelve and drop most of them onto the floor. We collect some and the wrong sized screw driver because I can’t find the proper one and off we go to the angry bee shed. Trying to do screws with leather gloves it bad enough add to that a hand full of bees to and it just takes ages.
We end up dropping the box of screws on the floor when we get stung and then bend over to find them and gets stung again this time on the bum, wonderful!
I have also buried my hammer somewhere at the allotment but I found where my son had dropped my Stanley knife, yep it was in the end of my finger when I found it,
So we give up and go to the out apiary. Cars loaded up and the trailer with the flat tyre is also loaded up, no I did not notice until I was on my way down the road
We arrive to the farm gate to find a new padlock for it fitted so we then have to drive to the farm house to get another key, when we get there we find the farmer and his wife have gone out for the day and his 30 year old son is struggling to calve a cow so I offer to help. They seem to use a large stick that’s like a ratchet thingy with one end attached to the cow the other I am holding. Any way after a lot of grunting one new calf is delivered, that’s when I realise I am now covered in everything and I smell, and I mean I really DO SMELL. Any way new key and off I go.
When I get to the gate I find I have the wrong key so another trip is made another key found and in we go. My bees are at the side of this field with a small 6metre wide strip all the way along which I drive the 500 metres to the hives. Except for today, today I find 300 tonnes of farm sludge waiting for me.
So 400 trips later we have everything shifted by the four bee hives, then when we are having a fag and getting composed do we realise that the bees are all bright yellow and working on osr, deep joy, not, where they are finding it from I don’t know but they are working it big style
All four hives are extremely angry and chocka with swarm cells and no brood, just stores.
Whilst I am going through them cleaning up everything and adding supers doing splits etc I have a hive swarm on me. No problems 20 yards away is an empty nuc box just in case, actually there are four nearby so I don’t worry, and I wander over pick up the nuc box to find it’s very very heavy. So back to the car and I come back via four trips with another hive set. I empty the nuc into he hive and go to collect the bee swarm. Only to find it’s sat right next to the largest hornets’ nest I have ever seen, great
3 stings later and another swarm are collected again. So now I am getting fed up and as grumpy as the bees. Using supers and no floors I manage to cobble together enough frames and boxes to house the nuc caught swarms. None of which are mine as they are the wrong colour. So, this is now 3pm and I have to go home get more frames made, get the spare hives in the trailer, get back to the farm sort the things out and she wanted to go out to night so now I am in the dog house because I love my bees more than her.
I have also used up every spare floor and cover board and roof and all my brood boxes so next week when I get home from work its tea time and pass the post and the screw driver please darling.
It does also mean that I have a load of brood frames with crystallized honey in them and I have gone from four medium colonies to 12 nucs in one day and all are too small to produce any crops this year. And the three of them are very badly affected with no brood or eggs and so I think either a bad queen of no queen.
And to think we do this as a hobby we love!!!
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