The Highs and Lows
As with anything I know there will always be highs and lows. It’s just the way of the world. I’ve been fairly lucky in this venture to not have that many lows. Yes, I’ve had a lot to learn and probably done things wrong but the girls have been forgiving. And when they haven’t they simply stab me to let me know haha. But in 4 months it’s been a pretty smooth process. Until this weekend.
Saturday hubs and I went out for inspections feeling darn good. I used a new jacket/hood that is better for withstanding stings and it allowed me to be more confident and “present”. Even hubs commented that I seemed more engaged. I always have a healthy fear of being stung but I was struggling to not let that fear distract me from the greater good. Well this jacket did just that.
We started with Hive 4, the newest hive. We weren’t a couple frames in before hubs found her majesty. Well as he was handling the frame she flew off. And not just back to the hive. We finished their inspection and hoped before we secured it back together she would be back…she wasn’t. Between hives we always give the girls a few minutes to settle down and get back in the flow of things before continuing on to the next hive. I used that time to send out help requests and started panicking. Everybody who offered a word of advice said she’d be back so we continued on our merry way.
We got through Hives 2 and 3 with no issues. All three hives at this point had been extremely docile and easy to work with. Then we got to Hive 1. Man these ladies are just not happy lately. They were not overly aggressive but they definitely made life difficult for us. More so for the hubs who walked away with 5 stings. Then when we were done and we were ready to go inside the girls would not leave him alone and as he tried to escape them into the house he brought a few girls with him. Hilarity ensued while we tried to get them out the back door until they got angry and one found my neck. Figures. And later that night another found the neck of our daughter.
Yesterday we went back in to Hive 4, per everybody’s suggestion, and still could not locate the queen. And to top it off Hive 1 was still being pissy and hubs ended up with another two stings, bringing his total to 7 for the weekend.
Now I could let this tear down me down but I’m chalking it up to a learning mistake. I know it could happen to anybody and plenty have said they’ve done the same thing. In the moment I doubted everything but I woke up this morning with positivity and hope. I know the girls will right this situation, with or without my help, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.
