Had a close call with my honey bees

While feeding sugar water to my bees, I dropped the bucket on a few dozen bees. And amazingly they did not sting me. When I go over to their secondary feeders I do not wear my bee suit. As I have noticed unless I am messing with their hive or close to it they do not seem to mind. The secondary feeders are about 75 feet from the hive and the bees treat the area differently than their home. Its like a giant flower to them, giving nectar to them whenever they want some. Or in the case their rapid feeders in the hive run out.

I only wear my suit when going over to the hives, so changing their secondary sugar water unprotected is something I have done before. But this was the first time I upset the bees by fumbling the container and almost knocking over the whole setup.

So it went like this, I was carrying over 5 gallon buckets full of sugar water over to set up the 4x4 posts so the bees can drink from it whenever they want. I normally use the handle to give me leverage, but this time it dislodged from the bucket. Causing the heavy container of sugar water to go flying. It hit one of the buckets some bees were already feeding on, probably 50 bees were on it.

When the container I dropped bumped the ones the bees were on, they all starting flying around. At this point I was thinking, I am about to get stung. So I moved back for a minute letting them calm down. During this time they were flying all around, probably stunned by the movement of their feeders.

Luckily they calmed down for the most part, and I carefully walked up the dropped container and placed it carefully on the 4x4 blocks so the bees can feed on it. I am amazed they did not sting me, as I probably annoyed them with that disturbance.

Well glad I did not get stung, my clothes were a mess. When I dropped the sugar water it spilled all over me. Soaking my shoes, socks, pants and some of my shirt in sticky water mixed with sugar.

I need to stop holding onto the flimsy handle, it was never meant to be flipped over and that is probably what caused it to dislodge.

Heres the handle, its not broken just came loose. But enough to make me lose my grip and drop the bucket.

Making sugar for these bees is turning out to be alot more of a dirty job than expected. I am happy to feed them, but keeping all that sugar off me is alot of work. And I find myself having to wash off after changing their secondary feeders.

I will start bringing a change of clothes with me in case I make a big mess again. Just glad my bees kept their cool and did not attack me. I am learning more and more about them, including what makes them mad and what does not. It would seem as long as its a nice sunny warm day they are mostly happy, and as long as I am not disturbing their hive they are okay with just about whatever I do.