Sometimes Tips are all about what not to do and are just as important as what you should do or how to do ideas.
Today we went to help a friend who was trying to do an outside removal in the rain. All in all the whole idea was a bad one, but the biggest lesson learned involved plastic storage containers. The person doing the removal was brushing small groups of wet bees into these plastic containers and then dumping them into the hive. The plastic storage containers had a inside section that was a soft rubbery plastic instead of hard plastic. He used the container many times to carry brushed bees to the hive.
The issue that showed its ugly head was all these tiny dark things stuck to the plastic inside the container. On closer observation surprise surprise the dark pieces were actually honeybee stingers lodged all over inside the container. Of course a honey bee dies after a sting and so each dark blotch represented a dead bee added to the hive. Sad story to a rough removal, lesson learned and may need to be remembered on other situations using soft rubbery plastics. The pics below are very sad to me but at least they will be shared to hope others don't make this mistake.
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