I admit that I am a little off, well OK a lot off. Beekeepers need to be a bit off to actually enjoy keeping boxes of bugs that sting us. I currently have bees in six locations, because state regs limit how many I can have at a residence. Our club has made an arrangement with someone with some vacant property to keep some bees there, so I have some colonies and some mating nucs. We also use it as a rehab yard of sorts. If someone has a nasty hive, an evil queen, we can put them there, remove the queen and re-queen. There are two colonies that I consider demon spawn, and right now it's not a priority to re-queen. I figure a couple of nasty hives might discourage vandals.
We have a member currently with an evil queen in the rehab yard, haven't had a chance to re-queen yet but that is now a priority.
The grass was getting pretty high, I try to cut it once a month. Last month things went fairly well, I avoid the demon spawn until the end.
To give you an idea of how this yard is laid out, imagine the state of Florida about 100 yards from top to bottom. We have bees along the west coast, from Naples up to Ocala, and a stand over in the panhandle, say just a little west of Tallahassee.
This past Saturday I went to cut the grass. I start on the east coast, south of Miami. All the way up to Georgia, then make a turn and go past Tallahassee, down the west coast and back around. Using this visual, the demon spawn hives are in the Gulf of Mexico. I made it all the way up the east coast with nothing to note. Made the turn towards Tallahassee and a pretty good sized cluster came out of the largest hive, they bumped me a few times but not too bad. When I made the turn to go south, they left me alone. I proceded down west side, behind of most of the hives, again with no significant problems. Then I came to the newest demon spawn hive. It's just south of Tampa. It's kind of on the coast so I can't go behind it. I made another turn to pass this hive and I think every flyer came out. There was a pretty big cluster hanging under the box. I wish at times like these that I was wearing a body camera. I saw the bees come off the bottom, it looked like a large cloud and they were coming straight for me. I also saw bees coming out of the hive, like a water hose just spraying. By the time I reached the stand that they are on. I was nearly totally covered in bees. I could not see my hands. I am so glad my vent suit protects the way that it does. I took a few stings through my jeans. It takes about 6 laps around the yard to cut everything, I made about 3 1/2 and they found a hole in the tape around my ankles. Several bees made it up my leg and I decided to finish another day.
Sunday I spoke with the owner of this demon spawn hive, we'll meet up later this week and de-thrown her. In the conversation I commented how I found it humorous how my arms and hands were covered with bees, how watching the swarm come at me was reminiscent of a Winnie The Poo movie. And the fact that we are willingly going to go through this box in a few days. Yes we're a little nuts.
