The First Sting Is The Deepest

The first sting is the deepest, baby I know, the first sting is the deepest. And when it comes to being lucky I'm not.

Yup, yesterday on accord of my own stupidity I was stung by one of my girls for the first time. Here's how and why it happened. The weather was beautiful yesterday, it had been the first really nice day since I had transferred the bees into their new home and they were out in full force taking advantage of this. When my wife and I got home from some errands I noticed that the entrance reducer was causing much trouble for the bees. There were too many bees trying to leave and too many bees trying to get back in. This was causing a large amount of bees to fly around in a "holding pattern", for lack of a better description. So I decided to remove the entrance reducer and this is when the gong show started.

Stupidity, cockiness, arrogance, or audacity. Call it what you will, but I decided that I could just reach in with some sort of flat utensil and pry it out....without using smoke, first mistake. So I scoured the yard for something to use and found a 5 inch piece of pointed mulch that I thought would work, second mistake. I then proceeded over to the traffic jammed entrance without concern for the amount of bees that were around what I was trying to remove, third mistake. The first nudge went well, but when I walked around the hive to the opposite side to get a better angle one of the bees discovered my shenanigans, she landed on my ear and stung my ear lobe.

It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, no worse than a needle at the hospital but with some added throbbing. I think everyone associates bee stings with wasp stings, but the truth is wasp stings are much worse. If not for the simple fact that they can sting you multiple times. I took this sting as "Listen up dummy, use proper procedures when dealing with us!" So I retreated to the garage, fired up my smoker and grabbed a frame rest that was both thin and long. I gave a few puffs at the entrance and had no issues removing the reducer. So remember, no matter how simple you think a task might be, use proper techniques and you won't have any problems.