A Cautionary Note for New Beekeepers:
  Periodically, someone writes about working bees without gloves, without
long sleeves, without long pants. I work my bees in shorts and a tee-shirt;
I do wear a headnet.
  Yesterday, I went out, opened a hive, and bees poured out and stung me. I
got done the first step in what I had set out to do, closed up the colony,
and retreated to remove ten stingers.
  In SE Pennsylvania, our honey flow is long over by mid-summer and bees can
seem ill-natured as they protect what they gathered earlier.
  Today, wiser by a day, I was ready with lids to keep almost everything
covered when I transferred frames. The scent of honey (from broken brace
comb, for instance) can excite bees into a defensive frenzy, so keeping
things covered should help.
  But the bees burst out as soon as I lifted one end of a hive body and they
were after me. What to do?
  I went in the house and put on a bee suit, gloves, and socks.
  Do the new beekeepers know that many of us old timers have these things
and use them when they serve a purpose?
Tim
--
Tim Sterrett
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(southeastern) Pennsylvania, USA