Don't Expose Your Weiner to the Bees

Now, before your mind goes where it shouldn't, let me make known that we have a Daschund or Weiner Dog.  With that bit of clarity in hand, today Dawn and I went to the farm to check on the bees and see if their were making queen cells after the 3-way split last weekend.  We also brought along the dogs because they enjoy the farm so much: Sammy (black lab) and Molly (The Weiner).  We thought the dogs would run about while we were working with the bees, but Molly (aka - The Weiner) stayed pretty close to us. 

As we were checking the original East Hive we found the bees were quite upset with our presence and began getting defensive and buzzing all about.  At this point I noticed Molly running on the back side of the hives and when Dawn called her she was covered in bees.  Dawn quickly wiped the bees off of her and threw her into the truck for protection.  She ended up getting around a dozen stings and was reacting to the pain and venim with panting, vomiting, and diarrhea.  We spoke with the vet on call and he recommended 25mg of benadryl unless she was going into anaphylactic shock, then we would need to bring her in, but that never happened.  With the benadryl in her system she had a very calm night, which Dawn appeciated!  So, the lesson learned today is "Don't Expose Your Weiner to the Bees!"

As for the bees, West Hive is doing OK, but I think I need to replace the queen this year; we found her in the upper hive box, but she does not have a strong laying pattern.  Now for the splits, the original East Hive will be East 1, and the other two splits going east will be East 2 and East 3.  East 3 is where the original queen is located as evidenced by lots of young brood and no emergency queen cells.  East 1 and East 2 have emergency queen cells going either capped or almost capped.  Also, East 1 has the drone frame and the drones are doing well!  Lots of drones coming online to help with future mating.