Bees Are Getting Testy

My traditional hive is decidedly less pleasant.

When I first went in, they were noisy.

I had a veil on and was smoking the heck out of them. As I was working them, I thought maybe I should put on my gloves. Just then, a bee stung my knuckle. Hmmm, should have listened to my intuition. So I ran and put on my gloves.

Then, as I was pulling frames closer to the center of the brood, a bunch of bees flew out and were flying in circles around me, buzzing loudly. I walked away, smoker in hand, and blew smoke all around me. The bees went back to the hive. I approached the hive and they stayed put.

But every time I tried to pull a frame, a bunch of bees, maybe 50-100, would fly out of the hive and buzz me, doing circles around my head. They didn't land on me, but they seemed to be flying right in front of my face, telling me to GET LOST.

I took the hint and abandoned operations for that day.

Next day, I went back in. This time, I made sure I wasn't over-smoking the bees. I managed to pull the last three frames, but they were still decidedly unpleasant. The hive is stonger, filled out 7 of 10 frames in a deep. They have more honey to protect, so maybe this is normal and I'm just not used to bees? Or perhaps the new queen is laying a more stressed out bee?

I have two foundationless frames that I added a couple of weeks ago, and one of those is drawn out. I had to cut a piece of crazy comb off one end and rubber band it into a new frame, but that went well.

While this "free comb" was laying on top of the frames, the queen crawled onto it. Glad I checked it, and I'm really glad I have a marked queen so I didn't drop her during the rubber banding procedure.

Also, the brood pattern is beautiful. So the hive is stronger, but hotter, too. I hope I don't have a mean hive brewing.

After all this, I checked out my other hive, and it was calm and enjoyable by comparison. When does the steep slope of this learning curve start to level out?