Against other worker bees, I presume it works. Balling is how they will kill my queens if they release too early, I've read that. So if you've read they can't ball other worker bees, I'll believe it.

No idea at all, I deliberately avoided reading about it in case I got interested in wasps too. If I had to guess, I would guess you hold them by the thorax and smush their faces into the lip of a glass, I seem to remember seeing people harvest snake venom that way. Snakes... wasps... close enough.

I'm not going back into the hives until friday evening.
It's very tempting to go in all the time, but I'm sure they'd benefit from me leaving them alone a bit. I'm going to be releasing the queens on Friday if they're still trapped. The internet has failed me quite a bit on this front, with conflicting accounts of what I am seeing and differences in the amount of time I should have them caged for, ranges from 1 hour to 14 days. Beekeepers man, put two in a room and you'd get 3 opinions.

One website says if the hive bees are all over the queen cages, they're still trying to kill her, keep her caged. Another says if the hive bees are all over her cage, they are feeding her and it's safe to let her out.

You know what, screw it all, they're coming out Friday one way or another. Maybe I'll ring the guy I got the bees from for yet-another-beekeeper-opinion.

You got several hives, release one and the other not? if she gets killed then u'll know vOv

A good idea. It's precisely why I bought two bee colonies, so that I could afford to miss with one and propagate my own replacements when I finally screwed up.
I just didn't expect the first Do Or Die(tm) situation to come up in week one.

By the way, I also tried searching on google and a quick search didn't find any really* interesting bee hives. Mainly like the pics you posted, which are ok but definitely no aircraft carrier.

Beekeeping is serious business

I've been worrying about mowing the lawn becuase I have a dirty big petrol mower that's as loud as small plane taking off.
So I've been trying to research etc, somebody at work said it's a shame you can't get a big veil like I wear on my head but for the hive, throw it over and mow away.
And I thought "I'm a dumbass, I can just close the hives" so I was planning on that, but closing the National hive isn't really easy, the WBC it takes literally 2 seconds, the National would take more like 15 seconds, plenty of time for them to spot what you're upto.

So I was umm, err, umm... and eventually I thought, I know how to mow my lawn.

LIKE A BOSS.

So I just cracked the mower up and wore my "FUCK THE POBEES"* t-shirt. They didn't even send out a single bee to see what the noise was. Yeah, bitches.
Sometime beekeeping is really not serious business at all.

As far as decorations go, I was going to make stickers to put on mine that said "WARNING: HIVE PROTECTED BY BEES" but in light of the fact that they don't even attack me when I go in the hive and chisel away comb it would seem a little chest thumpy.

*I don't really have a T-shirt that says anything like this.

ps: The predictability of these bee's is eerily like humans. I guess humans are more complicated but if you had never known of humans and started watching us from above you'd start making observations like we are with the bee's. Except, instead of put "smoke = bee's get food = control of bee's" we have "create fear = people unite = control of humans" it's obviously more complicated with humans but if you were to look at the masses from an outside perspective it still follows the same sort of patterns.

chunky what the fuck