BBKA Forum

I hae been doing my mentoring bit with a new beekeeper watching what I am doing and helping out. He's doing fine.
For many of us, there are still penty of bees in hives and there's not much for them to do so they can cause trouble if lightly occupied so my lively lot took a dislike to my assistant on Saturday. I was fine, no attempted stings, but they seemed to object to his new leather gloves, which took quite a few stings around the wrists.
He said that he is not confident enough yet for nitrile ones, which I understand, although the irony of it is that it's those leather glauntlets that the bees went for!

Why would they want to have a go at his gloves?

(I will try him with nitrile gloves and min-nucs next time, if I can persuade him to have a go).

Its to do with the way bees sting. Their legs need to grip onto something so as they can physically insert their sting. No grip and their sting is difficult to insert into anything. They find if very difficult to get a grip on nitryle gloves, hence less stings.
Also on leather you can get many unnoticed stings wafting alarm pheromone around attracting even more bees to them. On nitryle the odd sting is felt and removed so this is rarley an issue.

If its a leap from leather to nitrile do the halfway with Marigolds.
Best not the black ones though.......

I did suggest that - start off with thick Marigolds and then move over to cheap washing-up gloves which are thinner.