Ouch. Same thing happened to me today. It rained fairly heavily last night, was supposed to be sunny today. I figured, great - it will be cooler after the front goes thru, and harvesting will be a comfortable exercise. I had put some escape boards on a couple of nights before. That was difficult, as the hives (3 deeps plus 4-5 mediums) at this yard were so crammed with bees that they filled the space above the inner cover and were still plastered on the front of the hive. I could hardly remove the heavy supers off the stacks to get the escape boards on. (Had to stand on a milk crate.) Even then I only put them under the top two supers. Anyway, I got over there this afternoon and found that the bees did NOT all exit the supers according to plan. Not only that, they were EVIL. Have the africanized stock taken over up here in NY?! Good thing I had a bee suit - I still must have gotten a dozen determined stings beneath or through it, and I think that was lucky! Since the escapes didn't seem to be working (triangle-trap, board type) I had to shake the bees off all the combs, which were fat, chock-full and laden with honey-filled burr comb. My gloves got all honied to the point that it was hard to grip the heavy frames - they were too slippery. The bees were smashing into my helmet like little bullets. Meanwhile others were sticking to the gloves and getting mashed. What an uproar. The smoke only seemed to rile them more. By the way this was all on the hive #1. I only got honey from two hives (about 9 supers) and I had to retreat. I'll be back tomorrow, but I'm sure there will be leftovers chasing me again after that. So much for the nice day - maybe they were still grumpy from the rain yesterday. These hives are normally of above-average-good temperment and a pleasure to work. (I'm going to try soaking the bee-gloves in vinegar-water to clean them and then let them dry. They are probably reeking of venom from a bee's standpoint.) A truly amazing crop this summer, tho' I must say! The supers are like lead, and its practically as light-colored as corn syrup. Quite a contrast to last summer's dark honeydew-rich crop. Good luck Tim, don't get discouraged!