I've not been stung, but I keep my distance when the hive is open. I grew up in a 120 year old house that had two massive bee hives encased within the walls on the front of the house. I got stung almost daily in the summer back then, so I'm not too concerned.

My husband is the beekeeper right now and no, he has not been stung yet either. He rarely wears his suit anymore. Usually it's just a long sleeve white tee, khakis and his bee hat. He doesn't even bother with gloves! He's very gentle with our bees and they reward him with similiar behavior.

We've only had our bees for about 6 weeks now. They've filled about 3/4ths of the bottom box and are just starting to fill the frames in the middle box. They definitely seem quite happy there (thank goodness!). We give them sugar water free choice and my H has to fill it every couple of days. We've been questioning the sustainablity of this, but I guess it's pretty necessary as they get established. Once they've filled the hive, they won't need supplemental food because they'll just eat the honey. Right now, they can store all the honey they make and eat the sugar water. We have not harvested any honey and we don't plan to for the first year. Right now, it's all about getting them established. We also have no intention of ever selling any honey, so we can be very careful about how much we remove so that the bees always have plenty left for them.

Apparently, commercial honey growers make more money off the honey than it costs to replace the bees.


Shelly - definitely be careful not to disturb them too much in the beginning. As much as we like to look, we are being very careful to only open the hive once a week and only when it is reasonably warm out. My H knows a guy who lost all his bees in the first two weeks because he kept checking on their progress and it annoyed the bees. If they don't feel safe, they'll leave!