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Re: Any pro beekeepers out there? Just picked up my first colony -- need advice [daleagain] [ In reply to ]
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daleagain wrote:
...You'll get used to getting stung...

Do you really get used to it? I've frequently wondered about that aspect of beekeeping.

War is god
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Re: Any pro beekeepers out there? Just picked up my first colony -- need advice [Steve Hawley] [ In reply to ]
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Steve Hawley wrote:
11. It's fun to do but you needn't plant any special plants for your bee's. They will fly up to three miles to find what they need to do what bee's do--they will soon know every black berry patch, privet patch, flower garden, blue berry orchard, etc within three miles..


I watched a fascinating program the other day about algorithms, and an unsolvable one (at least thus far) is the Traveling Salesman Problem, in which you try to find the shortest route between multiple points without visiting the same point twice. This is applicable to bees because, as you wrote, they'll find all those spots and then begin visiting them and they have to do so in a highly efficient manner.

The program's host visited a bee researcher who attached a tiny pole that stuck up vertically from a bee's thorax, and then the bee was released into a field that contained multiple food sources for it. There was a radar set up at the field that tracked the bee's movements (via the signature of a tiny bead atop the tiny vertical pole), and it was fascinating to watch the bee experiment with different routes before it settled on the one it considered most efficient. It took a few tries, but the bee got it done.

War is god
Last edited by: Crank: May 2, 17 15:01
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Re: Any pro beekeepers out there? Just picked up my first colony -- need advice [Crank] [ In reply to ]
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It varies

Some people do get use to it--some don't

i feel a responsibility as a bee keep so i keep epi pens about in case someone has a adverse reaction while they are here around my bee's. There's adverse reactions and there's adverse reactions. One time when i was a company commander in the 10th Mountain Division my company was sitting on their asses at McDill AFB outside a hanger waiting on a troop hauler to go somewhere and do something. One of my guys got stung by a bee and the reaction was immediate and dramatic. If our medics had not had epi pens in their kit he would have died before AF ambulance could have responded.

One old guy in one of my bee keeping clubs has pretty severe arthritis in his hands. He uses bee's to sting his hands and swears it helps ease his arthritis.

A single bee sting and i personally am fine. BUT--one time i decided after doing some bee keeping and while i still had my suit on--that i would do some weed eating around my hives. Bad move. Never seen bee's that angry. Got bee's inside my bee hat and got stung multiple times in head and neck; stung in crotch; ankles. Had to get my wife to drive me to the hospital. Things started going black as we were enroute so shot myself in the thigh with a epi pen. Everything turned out fine and i've been stung in single stings or even a few at a time since then with no adverse result.

Pro Tip. Bee's do NOT like weed eaters, or lawnmowers, or zero turn mowers outside their hives! ;-)

/r

Steve
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Re: Any pro beekeepers out there? Just picked up my first colony -- need advice [Crank] [ In reply to ]
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The beekeeper who vacuumed up our bee ball wasn't wearing gloves and got stung once on the wrist while at our house. He flinched and pulled the stinger out and was back working in about 10 seconds.
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Re: Any pro beekeepers out there? Just picked up my first colony -- need advice [jimatbeyond] [ In reply to ]
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When I was at Purdue, one of the electives I took was Honeybee Biology in the entomology dept. Dr. Fischang was one of the best professors I had. In one class he took a bee out of the observation hive and had it sting his finger while we watched it through the microscope that was hooked up to the projector. Pretty cool to watch the venom sac pumping venom. For the last question on our final exam, he brought about 10 different varieties of honey (orange blossom, almond, buckwheat, clover, sourwood, etc.) and a big basket of biscuits his wife made, and we had to taste and critique the flavor of each honey.
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Re: Any pro beekeepers out there? Just picked up my first colony -- need advice [Crank] [ In reply to ]
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Crank wrote:
daleagain wrote:
...You'll get used to getting stung...


Do you really get used to it? I've frequently wondered about that aspect of beekeeping.

It still smarts a little but the terror of getting stung left decades ago and you just accept it as part of the price of a hobby, not unlike knowing if you mountain bike you'll wreck and lose some skin and bleed a little.
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