So I got stung on my neck

Which was no big deal.  I'm a confident beekeeper and stings do not bother me.  Haha. This is only partly true...  Here are some pictures of my neck:

Bee sting on my jugular 20 minutes later

and 4 hours later

As you can see, this sting is really not that big of a deal.  It hurt a little bit and now it's swelling slightly.  Totally manageable.  And so was the one I got a few weeks ago on my thigh.  It didn't bother me and only lasted 3 days.  No worse than a mosquito bite, to be honest.

But having a bee stuck in my hair is a totally different Audrey.  Clearly I did not fasten my veil very securely this morning and a few bees got inside.  I was OK with the situation and walked away to get them out.  When one stung me on my neck I was still relatively calm.  But once I realized there was one tangled in my hair (again -- this had happened before about two years ago) the drama started.  I removed my jacket and went upstairs to a mirror hoping I could get it loose before it stung me.  The buzzing was getting more and more intense.  You can tell by the sound if they are serious about stinging you.  I think both the bee and I started to panic at that point.  I tried to tell myself that the last time this happened it ended up fine as if the scalp was some sort of special zone of skin that isn't effected by stings.  Logic and reason did not convince me to calm down and I ran outside screaming for Anson like a child or a lunatic.  He did not appear instantly, unfortunately, so I screeched louder and shook my head like I was at an 80s hair band concert.  As Anson came over the tears started and I couldn't calm down.  It was a total meltdown.  He just walked over and crushed my hair in his hands until the buzzing stopped.  It had stung me moments earlier and I didn't even care, I just wanted the bee out of my hair.  I am such a baby!  Oh, and our neighbor was outside.  She said nothing.

Anyways, there is more important information to talk about today than these stings which do not even hurt:  We are losing our other hive.  We are so sad about it.  During the check today we only found 4 or 5 brood cells, and if you recall from an earlier post, this is not good news.  We likely have a bad queen and will lose this hive as well.  We could be optimistic and say that she is just slowing down for winter, but I don't think it's normal to slow down this much.  In my first blog post I mentioned that Poppop had requeened both of our hives for us.  This means that he bought new and young queens for us hoping that it would mean we had a strong hive starting out.  We suspect that all of these queens he purchased were bad or weak.  (Poppop is also losing one of his remaining three which he had requeened at the same time.)  We lost the other hive a few weeks ago and now we cannot find enough brood in the second one, likely leading towards its inevitable demise.  Our adventures of becoming beekeepers may have a hiatus through winter.  Once spring comes around we can purchase new bees and queens and try to start over.