At 02:10 PM 7/3/99 -0400, you wrote:
>   I tried misting the bees with water yesterday and it worked fine on
>the first two colonies. The third colony was more defensive when I
>removed the inner cover and I got a sting on the wrist.

My best results have been with a little smoke followed by water as needed.
A wet bee just does not seem to want to fly and seems much calmer in
general. The deeper I need to get into the hive the better the water seems
to work for the overall effort.

As for water to keep the bees out of the swimming pool, have you ever
wondered what an entrance feeder was good for? After I found out what a bad
robbing situation looked like I found that you can keep the feeders full of
plain water. It sure beats throwing them out :)