The 4:00 AM thunderstorm woke me this morning and my first thought was to check the radar to see if it was just getting started or just about over and to check for tornado warnings. Before it was done, there was a brief spate of hail. When I looked out the window, the hailstones were pretty large, about an inch in diameter. So, the new worry was how the garden and bees were faring. The bees in the top bar have been surviving the heat by hanging out on the exterior bottom of the hive like a colony of bats. I think they consider it their airing deck.

When I went out to check , everything looked OK. I didn't see any real storm damage except that the Russian Sage and the daisies were flattened, but they're so hardy I'm sure they'll have sprung back to life before I get home from work. If not, I'll just cut them back and let them re-grow. I thought the bees would have all scurried inside to take cover from the storm, but they were still hanging tough and looked none the worse for wear. I still can't get over how much larger the bees in the top bar are than the bees in the Langstroth. I hope that means they're healthier too. I really think there might be something to the idea that limiting the bees to a certain size cell with the prefabricated frame foundation limits the health of the bees. I'd like to do a side by side comparison of the two types of frames sometime and see if they're consistently larger, or whether the cell size in the top bar varies for the type of cell they're building, drone, or worker bees. If the sizes do vary, it makes their combs even more of an engineering marvel. In order to compare the two I'll need to build a frame holder, but my carpentry skills are not that great. I'd like to make one with a triangular base for better stability. The homemade ones I've seen look pretty flimsy. I've already dropped one end of a frame on the ground once, I'd rather not do it again. The top bar bees are more territorial and ahem assertive than the Langstroth bees. The swelling on the side of my face can attest to that. I think I've been stung 4 times now and each time it's been less painful and lasts a shorter length of time.The sting that was the worst was from a feisty little bee who worked her way inside my jacket sleeve. I could feel her crawling around and had hopes of getting her out before she did the dirty deed, but had to remove helmet and veil before I could unbutton my jacket and she said "Time's Up!" and drilled me. It took a minute to get the jacket off and the longer it takes to scrape the stinger out, the more toxin is pumped into the sting. That's why you scrape the stinger out with your fingernail behind the goo attached to the stinger. If you squeeze it while extracting the sting will be a lot more painful. Some beeks carry credit cards in their pocket so they can quickly scrape out stingers. Some beeks have said they're practically immune from the stings and welcome stings early in the season because by harvest time when the bees are at their most defensive they hardly even register the stings.