Our Little Sugar Factory
(Page 3 of 5)
March/April 1970
By the Mother Earth News editors
I confess I postponed putting the bees into the hives until after supper. I also sneaked upstairs for a last reading of the chapter "How to Install Bees in a Hive".
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Well, after supper I set up the hive and carried the caged bees out to the uncovered hive. I wore the bee-veil, but no gloves. It wasn't that I was being brave, I just couldn't find a pair of leather ones.
In opening the cage, I spilled the syrup can that goes along with the bees - spilled it all over my hand and about 3,000 bees tumbled out after it. Before I knew it my hand was covered with crawling bees. For about ten seconds I stood perfectly still. Then, suddenly I realized I was not being stung!
The bees were happily lapping the sugar syrup off my hand - that is, the two or three thousand that could get a lick in. I begain to think again and remembered to put the opened cage inside the hive. Then, somehow, I brushed the bees off my hand into the hive, released the queen, put the cover over the hive, and went to the house.
Mrs. R. had been watching me from the kitchen window. I came in, undid my veil and tossed it onto a chair.
"Didn't you get stung?" she asked. "Of course not - why should I?" I replied, shrugging my shoulders.
Right then and there I did get stung. It seems that one lone bee had crawled from my hand, up my arm, and when I shrugged my shoulders, I pinched her - and she let me have it.
I've dwelt at some length on the way I felt handling bees for the first time because so many people are missing the very real benefits they can have keeping bees because they are afraid of being stung.
All the rest of the year I was stung only twice. Both stings were due to my own carelessness. For example, one day I had been working hard in the garden in the hot sun. In fact, it was so hot that I wore only dungarees. Suddenly, I remembered I should feed the bees some sugar water. I carried it over to the hive, not stopping to put my veil on - or even a shirt. I opened the hive, flipped off the cover, bent over to pick up the Boardman bee feeder and had no sooner straightened up when I was stung by three bees. That was my fault for being so brisk and blowing my hot breath on the bees.
One other time I pinched a bee and she stung me. But by then I'd learned to rub, not pull the stinger out. And by getting the stinger out fast the sting was hardly more than a mosquito bite. With my veil, and gloves and handling the bees properly, I don't get stung.
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