Are You A Good Bee Or A Bad Bee?

    This is a picture of some old honey comb in a frame. We have two packages of bees coming next week so I've been cleaning up our bee boxes this week. We have ordered bees from several places over the years. It's fun when your order is delivered to the post office! They give you a call to come and get them pretty quick! This year we are once again getting bees from a local bee keeper who drives down to South  Carolina or some where down south and brings a whole truck load back.

    While I was working on our bee boxes I got to thinking about how different hives of bees have different personalities. Individual honey bees only live a few weeks, except for the queen, but the temperament of a hive stays fairly consistent. Some hives are cranky, some are docile, some are more active than others. You can make any honey bee sting if your careless handling them but some will take a lot more than others.

   We don't have very much in the way of equipment. We have a veil and gloves and make do with  a heavy coat and jeans. If you don't agitate the bees too much that's about all you need. You try to only open the hive on really nice days, that way a lot of the bees are not even home, they are out gathering nectar! 

   I have not figured out any way to tell in advance how aggressive a hive will be until you crack it open that first time. When you pry the cover off that hive and a few of the inhabitants come out to see you, I always have one quetion in the back of my mind. Are you a good bee or a bad bee?