Went to inspect my hives yesterday evening and things began well. This is a first year hive with two deeps and a medium super. I had added the super about a month ago without an excluder hoping the girls would build out the foundation. I had originally added the super without an excluder, but after reading that, that wasn't such a good idea, I removed it a couple weeks ago. Once reason for inspection was to see what if any progress was being made.
Smoked the girls and removed the telescoping cover. No problem. Still had the miller feeder on, it was empty, but the bees had run a lot of SHB up into it, so I spent several minutes squishing beetles. Simple pleasures.. right. The medium super had foundation being built out and even some capped honey (sugar water). Again, No problem. nobody terribly excited.
I removed the super and set it on the cover and proceeded to remove the upper deep in order to begin my inspection on the bottom. This is where things started to get interesting. The bottom deep was predominately pollen and/or capped-open nectar. No brood at all, and no eggs or uncapped that I could discern. By the time I had gone thru the 10 frames I had about 15/20 girls in my face, but no bumping, etc.
As I bent down to pick up the second deep to place it back, I must have squished a bee between my jacket and pants as I felt the sting thru my jeans. This is where life took a turn for the worse. As I began inspection of the second deep, I had more and more bees in my face. Usually they'll bump my hands, but not this time, other than crawling around some they were left relatively alone, but I was careful not to get any between my hand/fingers and the hive tool. (That's usually when I get stung). I found a nice brood pattern in the 2nd deep on 1/2 of the frames with the remainder either capped honey and/or empty cells. There may have been eggs but I was not able to see them, and am the worlds worse at doing so. Same for the queen. I don't think I've seen her since installation. By the time I got the deep put back together, there were several hundred bees in my face and I'd been stung several times thru my jeans.
Not a pleasurable experience, but once you tear the hive apart, what's to do but put it back together regardless of how much the girls are resenting the intrusion. I normally have a pair of shorts under the bib overalls, but not this time and I had about 3 stings on each leg penetrate the jeans. When I got back to the house, I realized things could have been much worse as there were approximately 30 stingers in each leg of my bibs. That first pinched one must have set them off and it's possible I pinched others as I was putting things back together. Makes me glad I dress for the girls, as I can only imagine the hurt.
Smoke was used judiciously btw. Once they got in a dither though, it had about the same effect as spitting in the wind.
Now to my real question. With the bottom deep being predominately stores and all brood in the upper, is this a proper situation, or should consideration be taken to swapping the deeps, moving the stores to top.
Thanks all!!
