I opened up the two new hives. There are lots of bees and lots of new comb. I could not find one of the queen cages – it must have fallen all the way down. I did not use smoke and the bees were agitated. There was a large lump of bees and I think they might have been huddling against the queen cage. I will wait a while before looking for the cage. There’s not much I can do anyway.
I pulled the mini-super out of the Connie hive. The bees were very upset with me. This is the hybrid Italian-Russian hive and it was very upset and there were a huge number of bees. I thought it would be over fast, but I was wrong. I should have used smoke.
I will always use smoke from now on with the hives. I was stung a dozen times today and I hurt!
I am 6 ft 3in and the bee suite, although being XL is not extra long and they bees stung me many times through my socks.
I think I will ignore the bees for a while. The next step is add a queen excluder and super on each hive, but I will wait until the memory of pain goes away.
