First, the Valentinium. We took it apart frame by frame. There was mostly honey in the upper deep. The empty frames were drawn out nicely. The whole hive was crowded except for the eastern two frames of the lower deep. We moved these over to the western edge and took three brood combs out of the hive.
During all this I got stung for the first time since childhood, by a bee I mean. I get stung by hornets and ants all the time, especially yellow jackets. I grabbed a frame and accidentally crushed a bee that was trying to sting me, and I pushed his stinger all the way through my blue nitrile exam glove.
Brenda got stung too, near her elbow. It was her fist insect sting since childhood. The bees were very agitated by our whole-hive examination.
We destroyed a few queen cups, and we saw a drone emerging from his cell. Our apiariella was there too, and saw the new baby boy come out. The apiaria does not come out to the hives any more since she got stung on Memorial Day. What a pity; she used to love hanging out there and watching.
We took two brood frames out of the hive and put them aside. We shook and brushed the bees off them and closed up the hive. We removed the two-super "attic" and feed bucket and put in one shallow with 10 frames with foundation.
Then, the Benedictium. I was very stoked to see larvae there. We pulled out three frames and set them aside, one foundationless empty frame, one frame with about 1/3 drawn wax, and another frame with plenty of uncapped nectar. We put in the three brood frames to replace them, and closed up the hive with out inspecting the rest of the frames, or any of the frames in the lower deep. We tossed out the feed bucket and left the hive with two deeps, an inner cover, a shallow, just to even out the heights of the two hives, and then the outer cover. We did not inspect the rest of the hive, since I learned what I needed to know, we have a queen. I do not expect another swarm, so I did not need to remove queen cups. Anyway, I was in pain.
The bee sting was in the heel of my palm, and it really hurt, not at all like my childhood memories. I felt like my whole hand was on fire. As I tried to remove the stinger, fresh waves of fire coursed through my hand. My memory from childhood was that I did not even notice getting stung until later, when I noted a dull throbbing pain, along with a stinger, in the stung member some hours after the fact.
Speaking of after the fact, Brenda was inspecting my wound after we were done and noticed a stinger sticking out of my wrist, so I was stung twice, but only noticed one. She scraped off the stinger; there was no pain until later. Now my wrist really hurts; the dull throbbing pain makes it feel like I broke it. (Another childhood memory!) The fire in my hand, however, went away within a half hour.
I went back to the hives an hour later, and I saw two of the frames I removed a Benedictio were being mobbed by bees; it was quite a melee. I shook and brushed off the bees and wrapped the frames in a garbage bag and took them inside. I’ll stick them in the Valentinium tomorrow. I’m in too much pain today.
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