My First Three Stings

May 20, 2007



Not my best day as a beekeeper. I made a couple of mistakes that ended up being quite memorable.

The first was to open the hive when it was cloudy and overcast. The hive was crowded, which was not a big deal, but the real mistake I made was leaving the hive open when it started raining.

I was almost done checking the hive so I decided to stick it out. The bees didn't enjoy the rain at all.

This wasn't too bad, but the real mistake I made was I didn't check my suit and I think somehow I didn't have my veil properly zipped. I'm checking the hive when I notice that someone is crawling across my cheek and I see a bee on my veil, but it's on the INSIDE of the mesh.

I am proud of the fact that I didn't panic. I closed up the hive, walked a little bit away, and took off my gloves so that I could unzip and remove my veil. Unfortunately there was a bee sitting right on the zipper so when I reached for the zip pull I got a handful of unhappy bee (sting 1). Then I was trying to unzip the zipper, but it's not easy to do as it's a zipper that goes all the way around your neck, so I managed to upset one of the bees that was walking across my neck (sting 2). I finally got the veil off and unzipped my suit and there were probably a half dozen or so bees in there with me. One got me on my ankle as I was removing the suit (sting 3).

I'm actually pretty pleased with the fact that I handled it pretty well, though I wish I knew for sure exactly how I incorrectly attached my veil. From now on I have my wife check me real quick before I go outside to make sure I'm properly done up.

The hive was progressing well, population seemed to be growing and as near as I could tell all looked good.