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 [log in to unmask] (southeastern) Pennsylvania, USA