Just wait until you try to steal honey!I have just come in from visiting my bees.
First off, the bee store guy lied to me. I asked for friendly bees. He said he would give me the friendliest ones he had.
He lied.
I opened the lid, peered inside and saw lots of bees around the base of the feeder. To quantify the term “lots” I will make an educated guess.
~2.5 million.
Well, it seemed like it. They were extremely hungry, I would guess there were a couple hundred around the feeder.
They had almost emptied it from yesterday. I was shocked at how much they drank. I removed the feeder.
They did not seem to care for this much. I had several bees flying around me. A few landed on me, one was on my shoulder staring me in the eye. I gently brushed him away. No idea if that is right or wrong.
Some followed the feeder, most followed me.
I then very gently removed the inner cover, this seemed to tick off the ones on the cover even more.
They were circling me and dive bombing. It was intimidating, but interesting as they all didn’t come after me, some just crawled down into the frames somewhere.
I pulled the queen cage out. The queen had escaped, so I assume she is somewhere in the hive. I needed to even out the spaces between the frames. I moved a couple a little but was afraid to move them more as they were really stuck in there well. I was afraid I would squish the bees to move the frames too much.
Also I did not have my hive tool with me so I had to use brute force. I have learned, always bring a hive tool with when opening the hive.
I put the inner cover back on, this seemed to calm the bees a lot. I still had bees circling and riding on me, but was like the anger was gone from them.
I put the holder for the feeder back in place, even this upset a couple bees. I told them I was giving them more food, but they did not listen.
I put the rest of the feed I had mixed up in the feeder, Drained the liquid to get a vacuum and put the feeder in place. Some bees immediately started feeding. Others kept a sharp eye on me.
I closed the lid, put the weight on it, picked up the Queen cage and headed to the house. A couple bees followed me 25 ft or so but not many and they weren’t aggressive.
I did notice a strange phenomenon, when I was almost to the house I thought I heard all the bees buzzing around me. I looked and saw none.
However, I was a little nervous to open my nice safe bee suit. I actually went into the bathroom and checked myself in the mirror. I was bee free and Removed the suit without incident.
whew.. what a rush!