Or so it would appear…
This afternoon I’ve been mowing the grass where I walk into the apiary. I always wear my bee suit when I do this just in case, though I’ve never had a major issue with the bees getting stressy. For gloves I just pick up whatever is handy. Sometimes it is rigger gloves, but today it happened to be a pair of leather gardening gloves with long black suede gauntlets.
It’s not been a great weekend weather-wise and today there’s been a real mix of showers and sun and it’s quite humid. Thunder is forecast at some point. It may be this that has put the bees in quite an evil mood, but before I’d even got half the mowing done I noticed there were dozens of bees piling onto the suede sections of the gloves and stinging there. I wasn’t desperately worried about being stung myself though I did catch one bee that had started to try to find its way down inside the gauntlet, but it’s not a good use of a bee’s life so I beat a retreat. I may try mowing again once the Sun has set.
Here’s one of the gloves. Each one of those pale grey spots is a sting. If that had been me I’d have forearms like Popeye by now.
