I've kept bees for about a year now. Started with one hive from a wild swarm I bought, split it about six weeks ago - and the new hive is mild-mannered, and the original hive is amazingly mean. After my beekeeper friend Mike hauled it away to a place where there aren't any people (or horses) around, he tried to study it to see why it was so mean - and then called me up just to complain about them! There were so many stingers in his Levi's that he suggested I should have the job of picking them out.

Hives get "protective" when they don't have a queen, or when they're not taking in nectar (because that's the time for other hives to try to rob them). I think that when I split the hive, the queen was transferred to the new hive, and the original hive tried to make a new queen (which is normal) but something went wrong so it was queenless for a month. Finally I bought a new queen and installed her a week ago... it should have made them nice again... if anything they got worse.

Sunday they chased us out of our backyard, and I called Mike to take the hive away ASAP, and went to warn our neighbors to stay out of their yard that night... and learned one of them had already been stung two days ago. They were really nice about it, and I gave them a jar of honey, but... yeah, I should have been even more proactive. I'll be keeping a closer eye on my remaining hive. If I can't walk near it unprotected, out it goes.

Chris