Living Dangerously or How to Learn to Love the Veil

Yesterday I went to help my mentor, Paul Kent, inspect his hives and remove the queens for the purpose of "requeening." He had secured what are known as hygienic queens from a noted apiarist and researcher named Marla Spivak, who had been doing graduate work in the area of breeding queens that had strong traits for keeping their homes clean and ship-shape. These traits would be passed on to her offspring and the hope would be that this obsessiveness for diligently cleaning house would have a beneficial effect in the fight against Varroa Mites - perhaps the biggest threat to a healthy hive. In theory, these special bees won't tolerate brood that might be hosting mites on their bodies and would thus toss them out, mites and all. The Varroa Mite's reproductive cycle depends on infesting the brood prior to their being capped off in the cells, particularly Drone brood. It is the latest of many strategies designed to combat these little parasites.
Anywho, I thought it would further along my bee education to see his frames and catch some queens. He has two hives that he started on packages like I did but with the advantage that he already had drawn comb on all his frames thanks to the hard work of his bees from the previous year who did not survive the winter. Another reason for my being there was that I was considering replacing the "Arlington" queen with one of these new-fangled hygienic lasses. And so we began...
After detailing my travails with a smoker in the last posting, it was ironic to me that Paul did not use one at all! In fact, he said he rarely used one because handling his bees without a smoker had never been a problem. Sure enough, we went through both hives, frame by frame with nary a wisp of smoke and the bees remained gentle and easy to work. Hmmm.
To make a long story short, we captured the queens, closed the hives and our work there was done. I gained some insight examining frames with someone who had "been there before" and could help me interpret what I was seeing. I even practiced the technique for capturing a queen by trying it out on a drone. You literally have to reach into the multitudes and pluck her out by grasping her gently around her thorax - the middle segment of her body from which her legs and wings sprout. Of course, queens are a rare commodity so it's best to practice on a drone for two reasons. First, if you're too rough and injure a drone, there's no great harm done to the hive, there being many more drones. (Of course, that particular drone may disagree with that assessment.) The second, really good reason is that drones have no stingers! Fearless in my nimble surgical gloves, I plucked out a party boy with no injury to either of us. Piece of cake!
After a couple of hours playing with Paul's bees, I of course couldn't wait to get into my hives and I was determined I would try this smoke-free method myself.
It had been over a week since I checked in on the Georgia girls and I wanted to see how they were doing with drawing out the remaining comb and to install a "slatted rack" under the brood chamber. Briefly, that contraption can supposedly help dissuade the bees from the notion to swarm by giving them a larger gallery beneath the brood chamber to hang out and trade foraging stories and other tall bee tales.
At first all went well. In the top hive box, the bees behaved about the same as when I smoked them. I inspected the frames and was happy to see great progress on all but one of them. The bees were rapidly reaching the point where drawing out comb would be done and they could concentrate on brood and HONEY FOR ME!
About this time, the bees began to collectively put together what was going on and commenced to rise up in serious protest. By the time I had set the first hive body aside and begun to pull frames from the lower box, I began to thank the Lord and all that is holy for the blessing of my veil. At times, I had literally hundreds of bees slamming into the mesh surrounding my face. The sound of buzzing rose to drown out the traffic noise on Lees Corner Road behind me. It was quite an experience! As confidence grew in my veil and other defensive clothing, I think I may have smirked a little at their feeble efforts to get at me. Silly bees! YOU CANNOT HARM ME...I AM BEEKEEPER MAN!!! It was about this time that some of them...I'll call them Mensa Bees...began to get the idea that there was a point where the veil and my sweatshirt were not attached and began looking seriously for an opening. Beekeeper Man had to rethink his strategy. I had seen the queen, no doubt smirking a little herself by now, and I decided to hurry along and get the slatted rack in place so I could get things reassembled before the Mensa Bees discovered the weak point in my armor. I tried to follow the basic rule of remaining calm and deliberate and I'm proud to say that everything went well, but I was a bit rattled. What especially got me was their persistence in tracking down the intruder for over an hour after I had left them be and returned to working on my front porch. I killed two bees who buzzed me and ended up tangled in my hair and another who seemed to get tripped up in my ear. Beekeeper Man not so tough now. I may have changed clothes, but they remembered well my smell apparently because every ten minutes or so, another kamakaze would swoop in. Outside their hive, hundreds of bees flew about for a good hour and a half and I stayed far away. Who knows, maybe some of those Texas girls were still able to get it together and saddle up the posse.
Next time, folks will see my smoke for miles! Miraculously, I was not stung once and though they gave it their all, the tally remains...

Bee stings....6