Inspection of Host Top Bar Hive
On June 16th, I inspected the hive at the host house. The weather was warm, but it was somewhat cloudy. The bees seemed grumpy today, I am assuming that they do not like me opening their hive on a cloudy day. I have spoken with the family at the host house to see if the bees have been at all agressive. They let me know that the bees are very active, but have not been aggressive.
This colony is growing and building comb quickly. They had sixteen bars and I added seven more. While inspecting the bars I found eggs, larvae, capped brood, pollen, and honey stores. The bees had also built three queen cups, but they were empty. The colony is looking very healthy and doing well.
As I said earlier, the bees were very aggressive today. Toward the end of the inspection I got stung on the leg through my jeans and my rain pants. She must have worked very hard to sting me! I finished the inspection and got everything closed up. I found some plaintain leaves, chewed them up, and put the salve on my leg where I was stung. It helped some and my reaction wasn’t too bad until the evening. Then my leg had a very large welt on it and the burning started.
My husband was also stung. One of the bees crawled into his boot and stung him through his jeans. At first he said that it wasn’t too bad, but by the afternoon his leg was completely swollen from hip to toes. His leg stayed swollen for about two weeks. This was the first time that his reaction was worse than mine.
In the future I am going to do my best to inspect on a sunny day, I am hoping that the bees will be happier. I will also be using the smoker, which means that I have to practice lighting it! I am am not very good at having the smoker stay lit long enough to get me through the inspection.
