Right.  The plan was to post something each time I went into the hive or discovered something new. 

Oops.

Because of weather and work, the bees were left alone for about 3 weeks.  When I finally opened up the box, they had made a pretty good free standing build up of comb, some of which was full of uncapped honey!  I took a deep breath and dealt with it.

Went back a week later to feed them.

Went in another 10 days later to see if I could steal some honey.  The top super (out of 4 mediums) was full of drawn comb and uncapped honey.  I lifted it off to see what the brood chambers were looking like.

YAWWW!!!  Every frame in that box (3rd from bottom) was FULL of capped honey!  I was unprepared.  Typical.  I only took out 3 frames, replacing them with empty plastic foundation frames.

Got stung, but was so frantically trying to close up the hive and get the bees off the honey frames, then walking the dog, it wasn't until an hour later that I was able to get the stinger out from behind my knee.

Sure enough, the back of my thigh and knee area ballooned up, got really hot and red.  Woke up at 2 am itching -- some hives all over. The next night, welts developed.  But by the 3rd night, the heat had stopped and most of the swelling had gone down.

The honey was crudely removed from the frames (scraped with a spatula), strained through 4 layers of nylon hose, and bottled up.  Getting 5 half-pint jars out of a single frame! 

Wait until I remove the rest of those caped frames...