Hello, new member from Berkshire UK

[Will C]

Greetings,

I’m Will, I’m a second year beekeeper with 2 hives in rural England.

(Currently feeling sorry for myself after a veil full of bees and five stings, after I carelessly wasn’t zipped up correctly)

 

[Erichalfbee]

(Currently feeling sorry for myself after a veil full of bees and five stings, after I carelessly wasn’t zipped up correctly)

We've all done that
Welcome

 

[Will C]

Hello and thanks

 

[pargyle]

Greetings,

I’m Will, I’m a second year beekeeper with 2 hives in rural England.

(Currently feeling sorry for myself after a veil full of bees and five stings, after I carelessly wasn’t zipped up correctly)

Welcome ... one bee sting inside the veil is bad enough - five is definitely a lesson you won't forget ! Stings on hands and arms are commonplace and you tend to get used to them .. stings to the soft parts of the face are really not nice. A couple of antihistamines and application of anthistan as soon as possible helps keep the swelling down.

You will find lots of good advice on here .. second year beekeeping can be very challenging.

 

[Will C]

Welcome ... one bee sting inside the veil is bad enough - five is definitely a lesson you won't forget ! Stings on hands and arms are commonplace and you tend to get used to them .. stings to the soft parts of the face are really not nice. A couple of antihistamines and application of anthistan as soon as possible helps keep the swelling down.

You will find lots of good advice on here .. second year beekeeping can be very challenging.

Thank you for the welcome. 3 more stings yesterday from my malevolent hive.

 

[Chris Hancock]

Sorry to hear that, most uncomfortable. Did you wash the suit to get rid of the alarm pheromones from the stings? You will get better at handling the bees and fewer stings- I get far fewer using nitrile gloves so I can feel the bees fizzing under my thumbs, than when I wore washing-up gloves, never leather! Then you can feel them before squashing, which upsets everyone.
If they are grumpy on opening, you can walk away to let them settle, move hands and arms slowly over the hive, and avoid jerking the frames- they like gentleness. It might be useful for an experienced beekeeper to come there to see if your bees have aggressive temperament and need a different queen, if they are still nasty. If so, get some help to find the queen, maybe in Spring, by moving the brood box away from the hive site so the flying bees (stingers!) go back to another box on that site. Then there will be fewer bees to go through to find her. I would suggest that you then remove all of her off-spring queen cells after a week and put in a frame of eggs and larvae from a nice-tempered hive. That can be left to get a new queen mated and laying, without braving the old queen's warriors. Hopefully, it won't come to that.
The little guard bees seem to find the smallest gap in your suit! Hope they all settle for you. If you are a bit nervy, they may pick that up, so maybe having someone experienced with you as you build confidence will be good. Good luck , keep calm and keep going!

 

[Will C]

Sorry to hear that, most uncomfortable. Did you wash the suit to get rid of the alarm pheromones from the stings? You will get better at handling the bees and fewer stings- I get far fewer using nitrile gloves so I can feel the bees fizzing under my thumbs, than when I wore washing-up gloves, never leather! Then you can feel them before squashing, which upsets everyone.
If they are grumpy on opening, you can walk away to let them settle, move hands and arms slowly over the hive, and avoid jerking the frames- they like gentleness. It might be useful for an experienced beekeeper to come there to see if your bees have aggressive temperament and need a different queen, if they are still nasty. If so, get some help to find the queen, maybe in Spring, by moving the brood box away from the hive site so the flying bees (stingers!) go back to another box on that site. Then there will be fewer bees to go through to find her. I would suggest that you then remove all of her off-spring queen cells after a week and put in a frame of eggs and larvae from a nice-tempered hive. That can be left to get a new queen mated and laying, without braving the old queen's warriors. Hopefully, it won't come to that.
The little guard bees seem to find the smallest gap in your suit! Hope they all settle for you. If you are a bit nervy, they may pick that up, so maybe having someone experienced with you as you build confidence will be good. Good luck , keep calm and keep going!

Thank you for your post.
The mentor I had for my first year on site taught me to be calm and quiet. I never had any issue handling them. I would confidently go about all my tasks and only had one sting in the first year. This year after multiple re queening due to swarming and our mentor pulling out, it’s very different. Our angry hive was requeened in early summer. An experienced keeper came over recently to go over with me and he thought they should be requeened if in spring they don’t calm down. From having hives that were very gentle, this is like standing over a pot of boiling water.

 

[Will C]

You will get better at handling the bees and fewer stings- I get far fewer using nitrile gloves so I can feel the bees fizzing under my thumbs, than when I wore washing-up gloves, never leather

For the first year I started with washing up gloves, then went to disposable. I had to buy leather last week as I could t go near the girls to work the winter tasks. I picked out about 10 stings from the leather afterwards so am glad. They found the seam at the wrist so had to walk away put on two pairs of marigolds and then the leather again. I’m sure this isn’t normal… onwards.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I’m sure this isn’t normal…

no, wearing leather gloves is never normal - unless you're hedge laying

 

[ericbeaumont]

requeened if in spring they don’t calm down

They won't, so prepare to re-queen before they make drones, which needs good timing and, if you're buying queens, ordering now.

More certain introduction is likely if you make up a nuc in advance of queen arrival and introduce the new queen to that, because feisty colonies often supersede a new queen quickly that is introduced directly. Wait until the nuc has brood and then unite it with newspaper to the main colony at the same time that you kill the old queen.