I extracted the remainder of my fall honey this past weekend.
Left the honey supers out the next day for the bees to lick clean.
That was mistake #1.
They did not leave it alone till dark. And then they just found the nearest outdoor light and clustered around that all night. And all over the wall near the light.
I brought The supers in at around 10:00 and had to shake the bees off it.
For the next 2 days after supers were put away and bees were not touching them they were hovering around where I had them set up. Finally gave up after 2 days.
Mistake # 2.
Wife’s mistake not mine.
Today she found my tote of what was left of the wax cappings and what I dumped out from the bottom of the extractor. I had planned to drain off the honey and clean it up but got busy doing other things. But it was sealed up in an airtight tote. So it wasn’t hurting anyone.
She brought it out and put it right in front of the hives.
I’m pretty sure 5,000 bees died today.
They were all stuck together in clumps of sticky honey and where the honey was pooled they drowned.
I will not be doing that again.
I will stick to hive top feeding and will just clean up the equipment myself next time instead of getting the bees to do it.