Photos Bee Difficult - 1st July

Once again I am slightly late with my posts.... sorry!

Originally my plan was to inspect the hives immediately after coming back from the school trip, but after seven hours spent on the bus with fractious pupils I was ready to go home and let the bees be bees. As there was no huge urgency to go into the hives on the Friday, I decided to come into school and do the inspection on Saturday, which (being without pupils) would also have given me the peace to focus on the bees properly. I must admit, as a novice beekeeper, I do find it challenging to focus on the inspection and do it properly, when pupils are constantly distracting with enthusiastic questions. Don’t get me wrong: it’s great that they ask questions and are enthusiastic and I enjoy answering the questions, but they do distract me and can lead to less precise hive inspections.

However that all changed when I spoke to the school secretary who told me there would be a photographer in school to take photos for marketing purposes and he wanted to have pupils with bees. A quick calculation concerning drone trapping and a look at my timetable told me that I had exactly one hour on Monday morning to do the inspection and the photos.

As the photos were for marketing purposes, the secretary and I had to agree on pupils to accompany me who would be photogenic, not scared of standing in midst of bees and be trusted to handle the frames. We quickly found two: the son of the headmaster and the daughter of one of my co-beekeepers. Nothing to do with nepotism, naturally. The mother agreed to come along too, so I didn’t have to worry about finding another adult to accompany us in the middle of a busy school morning.

So, as agreed, our little troop was ready and waiting at 9.30 am last Monday. Despite standing on a red carpet, no paparazzo was forthcoming. With time running out, we eventually decided to go to the hive; the photographer would follow when he arrived. Due to time pressure, I was somewhat more stressed and fretted. We kitted up, got the smoker going and walked to the hives. But, due to stress, I left the walkie-talkie at the shed where we kitted up. Luckily we didn’t need it…

It was a warm day, perfect for pulling the roof off the bees' home.

It was at the beginning of the inspection of the moon hive (the first one we opened) that the photographer arrived - and the inspection ceased to be an inspection. But I guess marketing is one of the prices you pay for being able to keep bees at the school.

In a flash, the inspection was no longer about the bees and what they were doing, but about the pupils holding frames, looking interested and pointing out things. They were both very good at this, I must say. It was also interesting to note that the headmaster, who had brought the photographer to the hive, stayed well clear of the hives while his son stood in the middle of the swirling bees.

I did make use of the time the photographer was taking with the children to examine other frames, checking for laying patterns, pollen and honey. I explained as much as I could to the pupils while they stood in carefully positioned postures.

Suddenly the photographer said, he'd like more bees in the air. Now, it is the object of a hive inspection to disrupt the bees as little as possible. Sometimes you do have to shake them off a frame to have a closer look at something, but generally you do not want to disturb the bees too much, as disturbances make them angry and when bees get angry - well, they sting. So asking me to try and get more bees to fly around was a bit like saying: could you roll in some bees and see if they sting you. Knowing our bees are quite good-natured, I thought I'd risk it nevertheless (although I wouldn't roll in them). The bees weren't happy about being forced to fly and their humm increased in pitch. The pupils stood their ground bravely and continued to look with interest at the frames with bees bombarding them a bit. So the photographer got his swarm and after a few more frames of film and hive, he left us towards the end of the moon inspection to finish the inspection without the flash of future fame illuminating us.

While going through the moon, I broke open some honeycomb (the bees are bracing quite  bit) and had very sticky fingers thereafter. The bees soon caught on and I had a resident bee on my finger, licking up honey throughout the whole moon inspection. Though sweet, it did not simplify matters. Quite generally, I had the feeling the bees were doing their best to be in my way as much as possible and sometimes just lifting a frame out of the box was almost impossible because wherever my finger roamed, there was a bee.

The moon hive is looking quite good. There are only a few frames not drawn out as comb and the wild comb is mostly straight down, meaning it doesn't make taking out the frames difficult. We saw a worker hatching and the queen. But, to be quite honest, after all the disruption with the photos, I did not take quite such a careful look as I would have otherwise. Cut away some drone comb, which was yucky again, as you almost invariably tear through some larvae and the white slush is painful to see.

The star is not looking as good. The bees were much more agitated and I was stung twice; luckily no-one else. More frames are not drawn out as comb yet. This could be due to drift and also the fact that I cut away some comb last time. Here the wild comb was once again stuck all across frames, making taking out frames difficult. I had to remove quite a lot of wild comb. I have hung long frames between the short ones, in the hope this will help the bees to make straight wild comb. We'll see.

In the middle of handling a frame, a pupil pointed out that my glove had ripped, which it had, completely. Strangely though, I hadn’t noticed at all. Anyway, I put on a new one, which I almost didn’t get into. I could see in my mind’s eye an endless string of ripped gloves; I almost decided to go bare-handed. While trying to sort out the wild comb, a part of it actually fell off. Luckily it did not land in the hive. All in all not an easy inspection.