I plan to erect a 3m2 gazebo in the quad close to the fence either close to where the caravan is or round the back of the woodwork shed on Sunday, drop of an extractor and frames to extract the beginning of the week then extract on a small 4 frame electric extractor during the week. It will take me about 4 days to extract and a couple of days either side to organise and clear the space. The frames are from my experimental hives and I haven’t been able to do anything over the past 4 months due to hand operations. I am experimenting using passive means to keep the small hive beetle numbers down. Other field trials are startng in October. My experiments self-funded. The gazebo will be zipped closed and the frames will attract bees who will be pre-occupied with getting a feed. Please leave the equipment in situ. If you have at least a bee veil you are welcome to enter the gazebo when I’m there or help out. Preferably, you will also need to wear a long cotton sleeved shirt buttoned up and long synthetic rugby socks to tuck your trouser bottoms into. Bees hate wool and leather with a passion. Leather shoes are OK. For extracting very hot dry weather is perfect.
To clarify. What I will be bringing to the Hackerspace is full frames of honey in boxes called “supers”. The supers are cleared of bees before I bring them to Hackerspace and I uncap the frames and extract the honey by means of a centrifuge. I don’t bring the whole beehive. I spent a couple of months slowly reconditioning old super boxes and you would have noticed that the smell of the honey from these boxes attracted local feral European honey bees - no more than about 30 at a time and they just hung out round the boxes with me. There were a couple of people who saw them. As long as no one enters the gazebo and keeps a 3m distance, I don’t envisage an issue. The extractor I have is very slow. It takes 40 minutes to extract 4 frames. I am going to ask another beekeeper for a loan of a 2nd one. I will be working through to get them all done.
Not being against the idea, and I understand that the only bees that would be present would be those native to the area anyway that become attracted to the smell, but “bees” isn’t a hazard regularly encountered at the space and aren’t mentioned in our inductions etc. As such, would it be a good idea to put up a sign beside the gazebo in a large font visible from a distance that says “beware of the bees please”, so people who don’t read the forums etc know not to approach?
(I personally find bees to be hilarious. Don’t ask why because I can’t explain it. And yes I did try to word the above paragraph to contain as many phonetic “bee” sounds as possible )