Bee-haver versus Beekeeper

So if you have bees and they (the bees) have not exactly agreed to the situation; can you still be considered a beekeeper? Saturday is mowing day and the hives are in the yard, ergo the electric mower and the bees are going to meet. I have been delaying mowing for a couple of weeks now to see if it would just mow itself, alas it has not done so. Which leaves me in the position to inform the bees that the orange monster is not there to harm them. Do bees see orange? That may have been the problem - I did not speak to them in terms that they could understand. The large upside-down poppy flower that buzzes really loud is not an interloper come to steal your precious honey.

They were actually pretty well behaved about the mower, but a hundred or so bees came out of both hives to check out what was going on. I was wearing my beekeeping jacket just in case, but it didn't seem necessary. So, like always, I decide to press my luck and take a look-see inside both hives to make sure that they have enough stores to get them through an admittedly mild NC winter. Mary's hive has been working the hardest and was the furthest behind. When I looked in I was very surprised that there was a lot more bees than the last time I looked and I saw a fair amount of capped honey too. I have a lot higher hopes that her hive will make it now. Elizabeth's hive was bursting over with bees and capped honey. I'll have to keep and eye on them in early spring to make sure they don't get too crowded and want to swarm.

In checking I only made one major mistake (I don't even bother with keeping track of minor ones): trying to pop the inner cover off of Elizabeth. They had really glued down the inner cover and I had popped the back two corners and for some reason decided to push the lid forward to break the seal on the front two corners. Well that didn't work. It just shifted the entire hive and made everyone inside a little nervous. I'm there trying to put the cover back on right when about 20-30 guards come out the top at top flight speed and hit me in the netting hard enough to make a slapping noise. There was little I could do, but keep working and try to reassure them that I would only be a minute more and they could go back to doing their thing. Once I got the lids back on everyone went back into the hive a calmed down very quickly. I went over to sit with them a couple of hours later and they were fine. I was kind of worried that they might chase me off if they were still upset, but no such problems.