One of the queen cells was on a clean frame. The other two were on the clean half of a slimed frame. But when I went back to look, I could no longer find the queen cells. I must have smushed them when I through them in the bag. Oh, and the bag smelled really bad.
Now I'm wondering if the brown spots was slime that the bees were tracking around, or if the slime had caused the bees to get sick.
I flattened the top of the clean queen cell, and opened the cap. I pushed two frames together, and the top of the queen cell was smashed into the other frame. Do you think she'll survive?
I grabbed a second nuc box, placed a sheet (whoops, two sheets) of newspaper between the two nucs, and added a frame of honey and a frame of brood. Both frames had bees on them, but I forgot to knock any extra bees into the box.
By this time, the bees were really agitated with me. I had a cloud of bees hanging around my hood. I learned later that I got stung twice in the butt of my jeans. I figured I had been stung somewhere on my clothing because the guard bees kept coming out to greet meet, every time I stepped out to look at them.
Oh, BTW: 3Reds is now officially a beekeeper!
efmesch's words were echoed by another beekeeper last night. Something to the effect of "you aren't a beekeeper if you haven't been stung."
3Reds stepped out to check on my progress. She had participated earlier when we discovered the mess, but had to go inside thanks to a bad cold that started last night. She came out later, to check on me, as I was cleaning up tools, etc. around the hives. I hadn't messed with the hive in a while, but the bees were still highly agitated.
One caught her just below the eyebrow.
No epi pen was needed, so now she knows she doesn't have a severe reaction to bee stings.
We put Bakers solution on the sting. We'll get to find out how well it works.