After reading this email string, I thought I'd try moving away from my thick leather gloves and either go without gloves completely or use something else. I stopped at the Grange and pickup a set of thin blue nitrile? gloves. They were very thin and didn't offer much protection, but I really wanted to handle the frames better. The thin gloves did a nice job. They didn't have to provide me any protection, ........ partially, because I was able to handle the frames much better. Next time I'm going to "sans" the gloves completely and just sing a few verses of "Macho, Macho, Man..." while I'm tending the hive. The drive to the hospital is only 5 minutes from my hive.
Looking at some the DVDs on bee keeping, plus all the photos in books and magazines, etc.; I see all of these mature and wisdom-filled gentlemen :-D :-D handling bees without gloves, veils, wearing shorts, sandals, open neck shirts/short sleeve shirts, no hats, etc. I can get a senior citizens discount at Denny's, so I should be able to do the same.
Seriously, I think I'll stop using gloves for a while and find out when I don't really need them. They make me clumsily and make working frames difficult. I suspect there will be times when their needed, I just need to work without them, if I can.
Regards,
Tucker!