Learning the hard way...

I've been keeping bees for over two years now and am part-way through my second full season. I do enjoy working my way through the hive, trying to guess what they're going to do next, trying (and usually failing) to see the queen, checking for stores brood and varroa.

I get more confident with every hive inspection and I find I am now thinking ahead more to try and ensure I am not caught out when I get to the hive as it is a half hour drive away from the house and forgetting a vital piece of equipment is a real pain and means a second journey.

Although i am far from being an expert, I do know a little and a colleague from work, who got his first colony last year asked me to go along and check his bees over as he was worried after the long winter. So one Sunday we went up and had a look. I should've been alerted by the pitch of the buzzing that came from the hive but I assumed they were calm bees like my own. They aren't.

We only got part-way through the brood before I decided they were too agitated to carry on, although by then we had seen the queen and made sure she was laying. We put the hive back together and I had moved away and taken off my veil when I wandered back over to help put the woodpecker guard on. That's when I got stung twice on the side of my head. Not content with that, they also stung Agnieszka on the leg and, as we left, I saw several come straight out of the hive to try again.

So for three or four days I've been walking lop-sided and staring out of one eye like some kind of cyclops. We laughed about it at the end but I'm not sure we'll be rushing back to have a second look; if we do, I won't be taking the veil off!