Disaster

I haven't written in a while because I am still reeling from - and avoiding giving any thought to - a horrific blunder I made during a visit to the beehive last weekend.  Quickly said, I dropped a frame.  Not uncommon, but certainly a)something I've never done before and b)visually and factually devastating.

I was knocking a pocket of queen cells off of one frame in the lower deep and looking into it for the first time in a week or two.  (Generally, I assume that if things seem ok in the upper deep, the lower one is in decent shape.  I avoid disturbing them as much as I can, and cracking them apart seems disruptive.)  

The ends of the frame were slimy with propolis (fall is when the bees build up on it to begin chinking up cracks in the hive for winter insulation) and my fingers slid off of the tabs on the end.  The frame hit the ground, trapping bees underneath it in the grass.  I saw nectar rain out from the honeycomb cells and soak the dirt at my feet.  In a whirlwind, bees took to the air around me and writhed in the grass as they sought to get their bearings.

Surprisingly, I did not get stung.  Short sleeved shirt and everything.  And I was prepared to, seeing as I was mad at myself on their behalf and felt deserving of their wrath.

The crushing blow of the whole ordeal was that my view into the hive was cut short by my desire to soothe the bees, and prevent a possible robbing situation now that there was nectar everywhere.  I carefully replaced the frames and spaced them in the box, smoked those bees in and reached for the upper deep.  As I lowered it on, though, the cloud of bees was especially frenetic, and all the smoke in the world would not make them get in and stay put.  It was unavoidable, but I squashed a handful of bees as I lowered the top box onto the bottom one.  Bee heads stuck out at the seem, antennae twitching, bodies crushed between the two boxes, fellow bees hovering nearby and investigating the scene.

I can't even write any more today.  I need to keep feeding them and I need to prop the hive onto a forward angle, and will do that tomorrow, probably.