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 Post subject: Re: I knew this thread was coming. I had higher hopes tbh.
PostPosted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:36 am 
PODLALA
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A+ tread
I love bees, my dad tried doing the same stuff you are but he ran out of time/patients/money and had to sell the hives.

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 Post subject: Re: I knew this thread was coming. I had higher hopes tbh.
PostPosted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 10:55 am 
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Marko Box wrote:
but he ran out of patients


:stare:

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 Post subject: Re: I knew this thread was coming. I had higher hopes tbh.
PostPosted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 2:39 pm 
PODLALA
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Drake Iddon wrote:
Marko Box wrote:
but he ran out of patients


:stare:



*patience

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 Post subject: Re: I knew this thread was coming. I had higher hopes tbh.
PostPosted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 8:30 pm 
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Drake Iddon wrote:
Marko Box wrote:
but he ran out of patients


:stare:

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 Post subject: Re: I knew this thread was coming. I had higher hopes tbh.
PostPosted: Tue Jun 19, 2012 11:23 am 
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Marko Box wrote:
I love bees, my dad tried doing the same stuff you are but he ran out of time/patients/money and had to sell the hives.

Yeah, initially I spent a metric crap ton of money on it, but I got a lot of people gifting me stuff at birthday's etc to get around some of that. I went and bought that spinner for around £400 and uncapping station for another £100 which I really should have avoided buying, you don't need uncapping stations at all, a bowl and a home-made stand are fine and spinners can be borrowed.

As for time and patience, well, at the start I had to spend a few evenings reading and researching and I was all keen so I was inspecting my hives weekly like they insist you do, but goodness, typically nothing happens on a weekly basis so now I only inspect the hives monthly or even 6 weeks, 8 weeks, whatever I fancy.

I do tend to look at the hive most days though just to see it's not been tipped over in the wind and the bees are still active. So much easier now that I have moved the bees once more and I have a hive at home now.

It's a shame your dad couldn't make it work for him, but he can always try again when he's ready to.

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 Post subject: Re: I knew this thread was coming. I had higher hopes tbh.
PostPosted: Tue Jun 19, 2012 1:57 pm 
PODLALA
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Maybe when he retires.

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 Post subject: Re: I knew this thread was coming. I had higher hopes tbh.
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2013 8:38 pm 
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I hadn't really intended to make any further posts, the thread ended in a pretty good place and everything basically went tits over winter leaving the alternative ending a much grimmer prospect.

But never mind all that, because while I was over the top busy getting ready for Wednesday night's practice session, around 1pm I got a call from Fledge who was working in her shop that I should come down to look at a giant swarm of bees. The shop isn't far a mere five minute walk, I thought I could take a few minutes out of my busy preparation schedule to see what all the fuss could be about. Probably wasps, but we shall see. Of course I did not know, but this is what the fuss was all about.

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The builders had, unsurprisingly, disappeared to hide and rang the council. The council had shrugged their shoulders and, with no deviation from being as useful as they ever are, said "Good luck!". I arrived ten minutes after this spectacle so I didn't even get to see it.

Apparently it took the bees just two minutes to coalesce into a beard clinging to the wall out back.
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There was still plenty in the air and the other shop keepers were, as one may expect, shitting pant and generally wondering what the hell they were gonna do about this, locking(lolwut?!) their windows and no doubt preparing flamethrowers. In light of the obviously impending apocalypse they were suddenly surprised to see me standing out next to them in shorts and t-shirt. Using my thimbleful of beekeeping know-how I had formulated a plan. I wanted to catch these bees, because I don't have any right now (we're not getting into this), but I do have 3 empty hives, so this is a match made in heaven so what could possibly go wrong.

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The theory is sound, I've learned, read, watched, heard that bees in a swarm have no hive, with no hive they have no defense reaction, so you can do what you like and they won't sting you. So, I'm going to brush them into that box I've put there, pop the lid on the box and as long as the queen ends up in there, all the other bees will want to be in there with her. The swarm will stay where the swarm is until a new home is found by the scouts, so once they are in the box, it's just a waiting game for the scouts to come back to the swarm, the scouting process can take anywhere from 3 hours to 3 days, there is no rush. Everything is set.

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So here I learn two things. Firstly, if you do this to a swarm of bees they will sting you in the fucking face. Secondly, I'm stupid enough to do it twice. Having already been stung in the face twice I figure that I'm basically in for a penny so I might as well try a third attempt for which they only punished me in the arm, twice. Having just assured all the shop keepers that I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing, I now look a bit of a prat with my two giant stings in my face. I needed a new, more betterer, plan.

All my beekeeping equipment is fifteen miles away in Stratford at Fledge's mums (Pat) house. She's aboard her boat on the river, probably drunk on Pimms with her mate. But a few phone calls later, a change of clothes and a little cry in the privacy of my bathroom later, we're all set, I'm on my way to Stratford, as is Pat with her drinking buddy, I'm not sure who was probably wobbliest at driving at this point, because she's high on Pimms, I'm high on bee poison and more than a little adrenaline.

The hurry is this, the bees are happy to stay put, more or less, for a few hours or days. But, the longer they stay in a place, the more people are going to learn the location. The more people learn the location, the more people visit, the more people they tell and the closer we get to some other bee keeper showing up or better still, some genius showing up with can of petrol and a match.

So we get back on the scene about 45 minutes later, during the drive I've been thinking about how easy this is going to be and this is so not how I was expecting my day to turn out. Well the bees had a new surprise for us. About five minutes before we arrived, the sun moved and broke through onto the swarm and they really don't like that, ideally they want a nice shady spot to wait in, so they just flew off. Fortunately they're not going to go far. As I get parked and suited up, the swarm has gone around the corner and is gathering on a road sign and around a drain hole.

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For those who don't know, that's not a Police man. That a Police Community Support Officer. Those people who like to hide behind their curtains looking out into the street every time they hear a noise, well now they get hired by the police to go out and pretend they are hiding behind curtains, only out in the world. They get a bit of training on how to use a walkie talkie then a sense of authority and an unwavering idea they can never be wrong is inserted up their asses and they are set loose upon the community who now think they have an extra poh-leece, but they don't, they have a curtain twitcher with a badge.


This pretend policeman is now asking me, me?!, what he should tell his control room, because now things are total chaos, the street is full of onlookers. The shops are shutting their doors and one even lowered their security shutters I shit you not. People are blocking the road not daring to drive through in case... what... I dunno what... but they don't like it. We've already set up our box, and we are already gathering bees up and dumping them in the box. Spraying them with water stops them wanting to fly around and things are going pretty much ok, but this decoy deputy insists that I give him my professional opinion on the risk to the public, inside I'm laughing at this. But I tell him, there is no aggressive risk to the public, I'm only wearing a protection suit because it looks cool.

As I'm doing this, the genius truck arrives, he's in the picture look - there he is! He's got this bright idea of squashing all the bees. So I say to the charlatan sheriff that if he successfully squashes enough bees it will release enough scent of death to send all the other bees into a violent Jihad against the human race. He got played, and he made the truck driver pull over elsewhere. Easy save.

Mindful of the fifty strong crowd gathered, Facetubing me or whatever, while the counterfeit cop is away at the truck, I cup my hands to the window of the jewellery store where two girls are holed up hoping this ends soon and I secretly shout through the glass.... "All these people.... they don't know my secret."
"What is it?" one said, quivering.
"I have never done this before." I replied as her face drained to white.

This shit is more fun than I could possibly have imagined.

Realistically at this point, the show is basically over but the fighting. The queen either drowned in the drain hours ago, or we have her in the box. Either way, the bees are pretty happy to go into our box, the only thing is, we can't force them in, they have to take their own sweet time over it.

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There's pat in front a of shop with it's shutters down to keep bees out, such is the kind of fear that only ignorance can fuel. We really are just waiting for the bees to calm down and get in the box. Over the next few hours, the bees are going in, and not coming back out much and it starts to quieten down.
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Kinda quiet, see.

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They're in there... doing whatever it is bees do... building bridges apparently.

As the bees in the air gradually reduce to levels one might only consider "deeply worrying" people start coming over and asking us about it and even some are thanking Pat and I for saving everybody from a grisly demise or whatever, which is nice. One lady said well done but "Bees caught in July aren't worth a fly" which I'd never heard but I knew immediately what it means. Even if we have the queen, we've got a race on now to get them up to strength to stand a chance of surviving winter, there will most definitely be no honey from them this year.

The crowd basically disperses now that it is clearly neither one of us is going to be killed by the hellswarm. I'm left with a box of bees, covered in bees. So I had to drive all the way to Stratford to take them to their new home wearing a full bee suit, that got a lot of stares.
On reflection, installing a new bee hive would warrant it's own post, but I was really hoping to just get it done. Bear in mind, I was just getting ready for tourney practice. I was making careful preparations that I might be of optimal performance without leaking a single piece of useful information to the people who think of themselves as our competitors. I didn't ask for this, I certainly didn't ask to be doing in front of a crowd. I just wanted to get home and get practicing, alas time was my greatest enemy, until this morning. My eye is swollen half shut, my forehead is ridged and solid, my arm has large bright red patches. I look like an extra from Star Trek.

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 Post subject: Re: I knew this thread was coming. I had higher hopes tbh.
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2013 8:53 pm 
Hydra RELOADED
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you should have gone around the shops demanding tribute to the bee god, non-compliance would result in letting the bees back out inside their shop

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 Post subject: Re: I knew this thread was coming. I had higher hopes tbh.
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2013 8:53 pm 
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most quality post in litheye 2013/10

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 Post subject: Re: I knew this thread was coming. I had higher hopes tbh.
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2013 9:02 pm 
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damn i think that might be the best post on these forums in literally ever

nice one

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