The Beehive

Last year, in late spring, I built and installed a beehive in front of the barn.  I watched and worried over them through the fall and winter, they seemed to be barely hanging on.  Lucky it was a warm winter, I did very little in the way of disturbance.  When they began to stir  in larger numbers in the spring, I added the 2nd deep hive body, then finished the honey super and put it beside, thinking I wouldn't need it anytime soon.

Then 2 days ago I cracked open the hive and added a queen excluder and put on the honey super.  For those that don't know, the queen bee and drones are larger than the workers.  The excluder keeps the queen from laying eggs in the honey super, that honey is excess and is meant for human collection.  The bees are thriving, there is no reason not to give them that super, and I may actually need one or two more.  I plan to add another hive, perhaps next year, but that's a different story.

Before I opened the hive, I had to prepare myself.  I put on jeans and a sweatshirt over my T, tucked them both in to keep out any of the nosy worker bees.  Then I retriever my hat & veil, gloves, hive tool, and smoker/fuel/lighter.  I lit the smoker so it could be establishing while I geared up.  When I picked up my hat/veil, I noticed a spider web inside... that's not a good sign.  So I got the bee brush, separated the hat and veil, and brushed them down.  The last thing I needed was to entrap a spider inside the veil, where I couldn't get to it!  After brushing it down I put it on and tied it down, as usual.  Then I picked up a glove and started to put it on, as soon as I had my hand in the glove part a very large, black spider ran up my arm to the veil and tried to get inside!  The spider had to be the side of a nickel, including legs.  I managed to brush it off, I think, and then I ripped off the glove and veil and searched both more carefully, squishing the fingers on the gloves carefully before putting each of them on my hands.

I'm not arachnophobic, but I was definitely startled!  When I was finished, I put my gear in the shed instead of the barn.  I'd rather not have anymore visitors and currently spiders have no need to be in the shed.

The girls on a cool day