I received a message this morning that the hives in one apiary site were in the way of the water company, who needed to get access so they could dig a large hole in an attempt to find out why one of their water mains is leaking. Today is Thursday. They’d like to start on Monday. Eeek!
I discussed it with the engineer and the landowner, who thought it might be possible to move the hives little-by-little until they weren’t in the way. I was doubtful, but went to have a look anyhow. After I had been standing next to a hive for a minute or two, cogitating, a single bee flew out and made it quite plain that she didn’t want me there. Not even when I started to walk away. I got perhaps ten metres before she went straight for my face and stung me on the left cheekbone. Fortunately I rid shot of her and the sting pretty sharp-ish and whilst there was a bit of a red mark for half an hour or so there’s no obvious sign of it now. I suspect that because it was quite a dull day there wasn’t so much forage coming in and the guard bees were a bit tetchy.
That pretty much convinced me that the hives will have to be moved away from the site.
I have a site almost three miles away they could go to. This is like some sort of comedy of errors. Unfortunately there’s a tree collapsed across the entrance and the landowner believes the dead tree is now occupied by nesting blackbirds, so they must be left alone. I may risk moving them to home as we’re still two miles away. Two weeks ago I could have put both hives in the car, but one is now double-brood and has a super so quite possibly won’t even fit in the car. That’s not a problem. I have a trailer. But the trailer is full of stuff that I don’t really have anywhere else to put 😀
Anyhow, I need to get it all worked out over the weekend. As well as all the other stuff I planned to do 😀