Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum

I have seen one or two stories like that here mostly regarding getting stung without protection.  I am just getting over my last error in judgment.  While removing extracted supers from above the inner cover (placed there for cleaning) Wednesday afternoon, I wanted to see if any hive needed a second super.  The single supers I left on each hive at harvest last Saturday each had 2 or 3 partially capped frames of honey in them, and the rest were drawn comb.  The flow has been good and I didn't want to miss any.  I pulled some frames from the middle of the super to check, and leaned them up against the hive.  They were all beginning to be filled. A few were fat and capped.

Now I wanted to turn the excluder sideways to try out that theory I read about here.  I loosened the super from the excluder and the hive, and the thought flashed across my mind to NOT pick up a partially filled super where heavy frames are slid against each side.  I ignored the warning, removed the super that I had been sliding frames around in, took 2 steps, and a beautiful, heavy frame of honey slid back to-wards me and the empty space, and then fell to the ground . . . . bees and all.  It broke apart spilling honey and bees at my feet.  I KNEW better than to pick up a heavy, partial box with frames pushed to each side.  I suppose if this is the stupidest thing I ever do that I can be thankful.  I hate waste, and it sure upset me.

Any one else want to share?

Not me! Someone once said its better to keep ypur mouth shut and have people wonder if your ain't right, than to open your mouth and prove it. LOL JK

Mums the word - Silence is golden - & - It wasn't none of me !   :roll:

Bee-Bop

What you didn't see on the you tube video my customer made of me removing his colony, titled Gone With The Bees, was me bumping into the medium and knocking it on the ground upside down. I kept my cool while cursing myself under my breath while I put everything back to normal. Somehow I didn't mess things up too badly and the bees didn't even think twice about my act of clumsyness. Should have been re-titled Bad News Bears Bee Removal Service!! ;)

Another time, after I had driven 25 minutes and spent another 15 setting things up, I managed to sqoosh the queen within mere seconds of a cut-out. I made my first cut into sheetrock, grabbed a piece, bent it back, and my first look revealed the queen smooshed between the sheetrock I was holding and the top plate, talk about bad beginnings!!!

Hey man, stuff happens like they say, just have to keep on truckin'!


...JP

Nothing quite that major has happened to me..........yet.   I have learned to use mediums because I almost lost a very heavy deep full of honey, bees, and brood a couple of times.  Eventhought I didn't drop it it was not a good feeling.  Now when it comes to handling bees I do try to listen to my inner voice---You know, don't do that..or do it this way or that way.
                                         
                                 Corinne

I've got cleats instead of cutout handholds on most of my boxes... Somehow I managed to get a super on a colony upside down with the frames in it  :shock:  Don't ask me how, must have been moving a little fast  :?  Later when pulling the supers it was found.  I had to get the box off first and then did the frames one at a time, it was all popolised together.  That's my big honey related bonehead move.  As far as general hive management goes, my biggest sick feeling came from the time I had a bad top that I thought "hey, I'll just patch that big crack and get some more use out of it"  I was thinking "roof" and guess what I spotted first?  Blackjack.  So that's what I used.  First sunny day that stuff melted down through the colony and lets just say I felt like I had surpassed the Exxon Valdese incident, sticky black bees everywhere  :-x   I'm not even going to start with the equipment design/ construction bonehead atrocities I've committed, too many to list.

    Hopefully I've already told you all about my latest and hopefully last inciting bee riot tactics.  Under the moron heading. :oops:

I raised a very nice queen, but after checking out her brood, I noticed all those in worker cells were being capped as drones - drone laying queen. My bonehead move was when I replaced the queen excluder after installing the queen cell, trapping this virgin queen inside the hive. I decided to take a few photos before I ended her reign, to remind me of this silly mistake. I replaced her with a ripe queen cell containing one of her sisters and removed the queen excluder to ensure her sister doesn't have the same problem she had.

Joseph,

Your queen is beautiful.  That is a great pic.

                                                    Corinne

Not sure bonehead is a severe enough discription in my case.  Health issues dictated that I needed some help with tree and brush removal.  The foreman showed up to evaluate the job and decided the bees would have to be moved for the safety of his crew.  I told him I would screen the entrances and everyone would be fine.  These were large healthy hives in late spring.  They came and did their work and I took my "stupid" pills 4 times a day as directed.  Sometime later, I noticed not much air traffic in the usual flight patterns, but the "stupid" pills were very effective and more time passed before I checked things out.  You can imagine my panic when I discovered I had left all the screens on.  I did a really good job screening some of them and while some of them had found new entrances, others had not.  Very un-good.