# Worst mistake of 2014.



## Michael B (Feb 6, 2010)

Leaving a gap in the ventilation screen on my cell builder colony. All the bees took off and didn't start any queen cells.


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## drlonzo (Apr 15, 2014)

Left my QC's on in the finisher 1 day too long. Ended up with only 1 queen out of the bunch but she's a beauty. 

Glock - Did you get up to 20 Nuc's like you wanted?


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

also a cell builder mistake, missed a couple of queen cells in the starter/finisher and when those virgins hatched they destroyed most of my grafts. :doh:


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## biggraham610 (Jun 26, 2013)

Figuring I knew a little something about bees in my second year. :no: G


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## odfrank (May 13, 2002)

Bought ten frame medium honey supers from Charlie B and paid way too much. 
They do look nice all gussied up.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Opening this Thread.  I prefer to forget my mistakes and concentrate on what I will do correctly in 2015.


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## imthegrumpyone (Jun 29, 2013)

At my age, I :kn: and I'm to old to remember my worst mistake.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

The mistakes do lead to what one will do correctly.

One of mine this season was to follow my normal practise and feed around 2 tons of comb honey to spring nucs.

During the process I realised I was a mug. The price of honey has gone up hugely here I should have sold the honey and fed sugar.


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## liljake83 (Jul 2, 2013)

I purchased some queens when starting my overwintering nucs and when i was marking one she slipped out of my fingers and flew away $25 flying away she kept flying by I didnt have a net so I grabbed a spagetti strainer and tryed to catch her I never did but I'm sure I looked like an idiot jumping around trying to catch her


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## JMann70806 (Oct 13, 2014)

Being a new beek and worried about my 1st hive I placed a 2 gal feeder directly on top of the hive. About a week later my father called from the farm asking if the bee's were Africanized bees


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## skosma (May 30, 2013)

Putting a weak nuc next to a strong colony without a reduced entrance. Also putting a caged queen into a colony with out looking for ALL the queens.


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## MTN-Bees (Jan 27, 2014)

Left a cinder block off a lid. The lid blew off in a thunderstorm. This started a robbing frenzy. This required me to move Nucs and hives to control the robbing. This required a lot of time to fix.


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## papabear (Mar 5, 2014)

trying to get a caught swarm queen wright.after several tries of putting in eggs we left for n.c. state summer meeting. brought back 2 queens with us to start a couple of nucs. swarm was still not right so i put 1 queen in have .they released her 3 days later all was going well until 2 days later they all left. should have put queen excluder on entrance.


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## HarryVanderpool (Apr 11, 2005)

The one and only mistake that I made this year was when I thought that I had made a mistake and actually hadn't.
I was mistaken there.
That was my only mistake.


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## TalonRedding (Jul 19, 2013)

HarryVanderpool said:


> The one and only mistake that I made this year was when I thought that I had made a mistake and actually hadn't.
> I was mistaken there.
> That was my only mistake.


The field mouse is fast, but the owl hunts at night...


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## WBVC (Apr 25, 2013)

I made so many it is hard to know the biggest 

Immediate kicker was twice in one day opening up hives to watch an assumed virgin queen run across the top of the frames and kamakatzee over the edge never to be seen again and few minutes later opening a hive, again quick glimpse of an unmarked Queen on the top a frame and within a moment she simply flew away! Yes it seems virgin Queens are runny and unpredictable.
Another was following advice without thinking. Purchased a mated Queen and installed her in a cage in a nuc. Was advised to close the entrance for a day or so. Checked after 36 hours and all were dead...it didn't seem very warm out but guess the bees heated up the inside. I feel waful when my ignorance results in the death of creatures that would have been fine without me


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

WBVC said:


> Was advised to close the entrance for a day or so.(


Agree, that is one of the most commonly given bad bits of advice, it is dispensed as a panacea for everything from robbing to hive moving, it is sometimes appropriate but very often not.


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## LoneWolf (Feb 25, 2014)

Worst mistake was thinking mites would not be a big deal my first year and not doing more checks. May have saved my hives with an OA treatment at the last moment, but I will not know for sure for a few more months.


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## canoemaker (Feb 19, 2011)

Was advised to close the entrance for a day or so. :([/QUOTE said:


> I took the same advice with packages last spring and ended up cooking nine of them on an unseasonably, and unexpectedly, warm day. I'm still haunted from the vision of all those dead bees.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

I had a marked queen simply walk/fall/fly right off the combs and into the grass (or off) somewhere. Having read some things about this I stayed where I was, shook a few bars of bees off onto the top of my TBH so that they were Nasonov-ing their brains out and waited hoping she would make her way back. After a few minutes I closed everything back up and checked the ground throughly. I'm sure I stepped on her or something.

On at least two occasions this year (my first) I mistook swarm cells for simple supercedure. I'd had bad luck with a package trying to raise their own queen so I got gun shy about handling combs with queen cells on them so as soon as I saw a single queen cell I'd close up the hive and leave them for a couple of weeks. One hive was not cramped or terribly well populated and the flow was nearly over... so I will give myself a pass on that (we'll see how swarmy they are this coming year if they overwinter). The other had probably three gallons worth of bees in a huge mass behind the last active combs in one of our TBHs and I should have known better... They swarmed themselves silly and the huge Italian hive next door finished them off while they were queenless (I'm most sad about losing her genetics (attached pic of her pattern... bar after bar after bar just like that)... but I do have one of her sisters in a Lang that is doing well so far this winter). Both of these were swarm captures and built up well. 

Year two (if anything survives the winter) is going to be a lesson and I'm excited to learn what other mistakes I made in year one... 











Her sister that's still kicking in a Lang...


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

1. Releasing a mated queen outside in the backyard. Cost $67 to buy her. She flew away and never came back. I didn't even have a
sieve or butterfly screen to try to catch her. Should of clip her wing first. Ads said is a mite resistant queen too. Oh well.
2. Killed off a good laying queen while restocking my yard with mite resistant queens. Should of leave the good queen to compare against
the mite resistant queens first. A prolific local layer too.
3. Making too many splits for too many queens. Should of take it easy and not try to expand too fast.
4. Fall feeding too much syrup too fast that the bees back filled their nest right on the Fall when they should of making the winter bees. No
room for the queens to lay as a result. No extra drawn comb to replace either.
5. Did not make new mating nuc hives but instead use the old ones. Turn out that they became the DL hives killing off many newly hatched
virgin queens. DL hives will not tolerate a newly hatched virgin queen, mind you. Sometimes they would tore down the qc also. Expensive and
time consuming way to learn about making queens.


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## BernhardHeuvel (Mar 13, 2013)

That high priced queens seem to be trained to fly back to the vendor! 

My mistake of the year was to have one hive without the open mesh floor closed. Simply forget to bring a spare drawer with me. When I came to that hive to treat in autumn, I needed a floor board/drawer to close it. Without thinking much about it, I pulled the one from the neighbouring hive...and leaving it at the hive with the formerly open floor. The neighbour hive had brood right down to the floor, since the floor was shut. By pulling the drawer I exposed the brood to the chilly cold September nights. Result: brood chilled to death. A real heart-breaking sight. And a silly thing to do. Remember: think while working. Hurry hurry brings worry worry.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

My worst mistake this year was no provision for the probability of having some colonies to do the supersedure late on the year, where virgin queens are no longer mated.
I'm already looking for queens breeders who can provide me queens between August and November to safeguard this situation in 2015 .


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## bevy's honeybees (Apr 21, 2011)

sqkcrk said:


> Opening this Thread.  I prefer to forget my mistakes and concentrate on what I will do correctly in 2015.


See my new thread 2015 plans.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

I am not even going to say. It has been well publicized.


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## WWW (Feb 6, 2011)

Well I would have to say that my worst mistake this year came on February 28th when I slid through an icy intersection and was t-boned on the driver side door dislocating two joints in my left shoulder and totaling my Cherokee, this left me unable to work the hives for months but somehow the hives made it through the year with a one armed beekeeper. I am much better now however I have an idea that some of the joint pain will be something that I will just have to live with for the rest of my life.


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## Dan P (Oct 29, 2014)

Got a swarm that filled two deeps. Very aggressive on arrival to location. Brought them home and in two days they consumed my other hives that were both italians. So I would assume that I will always feed a new capture until established. Maybe even screen or excluder on front for a while.


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

I have to say, letting two really nice juicy newly mated queens get away from me and fly away was hard to take. That's why I clip a wing now on every mated queen. It makes it easier for my customers to direct release their queens too, if they wish. You don't loose many, but one's enough to make you hang your head..after you do that little pathetic dancing jig trying to catch them without squishing them.inch:
Every year I loose one or two. No more.



















I was also fooled with a large hive with a pretty fair mite drop late July/early August. I didn't want to break the hive up during a dearth period, so I installed Apivar. I was surprised to see not only was I not getting increased mite drop, but the numbers were quickly _decreasing_ to almost nothing. Upon inspection about a week or so later, I discovered they had requeened themselves and gone through a brood break, exposing the mites and causing the natural drop. The marked queen was gone and a new unmarked queen with only eggs and open brood was in her place. There was no need to treat after all. I removed the strips, and noted the lesson.


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

1. Not adding more supers to the hive in May, resulting in swarming. (Plus side was I got lots of queen cells to start splits)

2. Buying a queen in August, so starting the hive too late in the year. (We'll see if it makes it overwinter)

3. Stacking the 2 small hives on top of 2 stronger hives, mainly because I can't lift the small hives up to get sugar cakes to the bottom hives. Hope they have enough feed in there till the top hives get lighter and I can lift them, or the weather gets warm enough to separate the hives again.

My main goal this spring is to throw supers on there in early May, even tho it seems to me too cold to worry about hive buildup. It's not.


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## bison (Apr 27, 2011)

MTN-Bees said:


> Left a cinder block off a lid. The lid blew off in a thunderstorm. This started a robbing frenzy. This required me to move Nucs and hives to control the robbing. This required a lot of time to fix.


Similar for me - left a brick off of a lid, lid blew off in a storm and swamped the hive with rain, killing it. Also I missed some signs of mites that if I'd seen before would have helped save a couple hives. Otherwise a pretty good year.


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## Margot1d (Jun 23, 2012)

With out a doubt it was when I had the bright idea of using the hot water spiket at the corner store to fill a mason jar to mix syrup. It cracked and scalding water went all over my leg. 30 minutes later I was in the emergency room with second degree burns. The scar is a reminder to think first, and that I am not super women. I still think it is just as easy to hurt yourself with the smoker as from the bees.

My other mistake was not feeding new nucs....they developed efb.


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## philip.devos (Aug 10, 2013)

HarryVanderpool said:


> The one and only mistake that I made this year was when I thought that I had made a mistake and actually hadn't.
> I was mistaken there.
> That was my only mistake.


WHA..?

HarryVanderpool is really a pseudonym for Yogi Berra.

My bad mistake was doing a split during the middle of the nectar flow.


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## Tommy Hodge (Jun 4, 2013)

Tried to combine a nuc with a laying worker colony. Yes, the laying worker colony killed the queen from the nuc.


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## Just Krispy (Aug 1, 2013)

Missed queen cells in 2 hives I requeened due to aggressive behavior. Virgins hatched and killed the VSH queens. Bye bye $40 bucks. I also over fed 2 hives so the queen had no room to lay to make winter bees. Don't expect either one to survive winter.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Tommy what you tried can be done, but the right procedure has to be followed.

If you want to, describe what you did plus the strength of the respective colonies and I will describe how it could have been done safely.


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## rfgreenwell (Feb 14, 2010)

Hate to even think about it, but I let a rogue queen develop in my queen bank and she killed 24 II VSH X VSH breeders I had just finished inseminating and placed awaiting the second anesthesia treatment. Had been using the bank/cloake board arrangement as a starter and finisher from the graft right through the insemination day, checking it early on for rogue cells, but forgot that a virgin from the box below might squeeze up through the excluder or returned to the wrong entrance. Too long a period... graft through emergence, hardening off period, then the insemination and couple days for 2nd go round. The bottom box built up of course and swarmed without my notice. Frustrated but wiser.


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## SWM (Nov 17, 2009)

My biggest mistake this year was spending too much time in front of my computer, staring into a virtual world instead of taking better care of my bees in the real world.


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

rfgreenwell !!

I hate to tell you, I believe you are in first place with the worst story for this thread!

_That_ is a horror story. 

I feel a little cringy just reading it.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Agree that would certainly have messed up my day.

So easy to do though, I still get caught with rogue virgins in cell raisers no matter how cleverly I think I've set it up.


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

SWM said:


> My biggest mistake this year was spending too much time in front of my computer, staring into a virtual world instead of taking better care of my bees in the real world.


That's near the top of my new yrs. resolutions - less internet, more real world. So far, so good.


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## jcolon (Sep 12, 2014)

1. Disturbed the broods nest at the wrong time. 
2. Almost let them starve during dearth. Found no brood, no storage. They were on the verge of extinction. Started feeding and voila!
3. Triggered robbing when feeding. Stop it quickly. 
4. Robbing again, and still fed a syrup bag. Chaos. Somehow they won!


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## suzyq (Jun 30, 2014)

2014 first year beekeeping. Started with 2 hives. Hive 1 didn't thrive like hive 2. Slowly saw less and less honeybees. Was told to leave them be if there was a problem the bees would fix it. They didn't. Finally checked to find a drone laying queen. Drones everywhere, bees minimal. Eventually bees died out and queen took off. Hive 2 had mites so I started powder sugar treatment.  Did 6 weeks in a row that another sight suggested if they were plentiful. Made mean bees. Got stung several feet from hive and got chased away from hive consistently. Stopped treatments and it improved greatly. Meanwhile bees swarmed and swarmed and swarmed. 4 to 5 times. Found your sight and went with OAV went and picked up a beautiful Italian queen and in weeks had orientations! Thrilled but went right into winter with low numbers. Ordered new bees for hive 1 and praying hive 2 will survive through winter. Lessons learned all around. Mistakes have made me wiser and learned to follow my heart.


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## Matt903 (Apr 8, 2013)

Putting nucs in the same yard as strong hives. I have gotten away with it for years, but this summer it caught up with me. I hated opening those robbed out dead nucs and knowing it was my fault because I was to lazy to move them to another yard.


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

I think my worst mistakes will be making nucs too late in the season and failing to replace marginal queens before going into winter. My adult bee populations going into winter were much smaller than I like them to be.


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## M.Landis (Jan 13, 2014)

As a first year beekeeper I got busy with other things and didn't under-super in time. We had a terrible early cold snap for about 10 days and when I next checked, I learned that this beekeeper was now a beekiller. It looked as if the hive had just frozen in the middle of normal everyday activity. I feel just awful.


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## M.Landis (Jan 13, 2014)

Do you have your hives wrapped in black plastic? I am new to beekeeping...what is this for?

Thank you


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## BeeGhost (May 7, 2011)

My mistake was making too weak of splits because I had lots of "extra" queen cells and didn't want to waste them. This year I am going to make splits into strong 4 framers. 

Things I did right: Pulled honey supers in the first part of August and treated for mites at that time, only lost one hive to mites and it was a late split I made that I didn't treat as an experiment. 
Fed pollen sub starting in Late August. I did lose a couple hives to drone laying queens which sucks. Another thing I will do is re-queen all hives in August and take the "older" queens and put them into 5 frame nucs to over winter, that way I will have resources come spring to replace failed hives. My grower told me he wants 38 hives from now on, I am short for the 2015 season but will hopefully have well over that going into 2016!!


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## Happy Honey Farm (Feb 14, 2010)

I killed my breeder queen before i could get any grafts from her


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## Cub (Feb 14, 2013)

I will no longer expect a fall flow in my area.


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## Tommy Hodge (Jun 4, 2013)

Hey Oldtimer,

I just reviewed my notes on the nuc combine. The laying worker colony was a new package (3 lb) installed early April. The queen was released in 4 or 5 days, and I noted a spotty egg laying pattern that turned out to be mostly drones. I never did spot the queen. Pretty soon after that I noted multiple eggs in cells and numerous drone cells, etc...my assumption was that the colony had disposed of the queen at some point...that leads me to the nuc combine. The nuc was an early April split with a newly mated queen. The combine was on May 1. The nuc was relatively strong (5 frames all drawn out 4 frames of brood, lots of bees, etc) and the package was beginning to dwindle. The rest is history...! Thoughts?
Thanks,
Tommy


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Tommy I didn't want to get too far off topic so have sent you a private message.


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## Beelosopher (Sep 6, 2012)

install mouse guards.... first big snow we had allowed a mice into the upper entrances of a couple of my nucs....


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Beelosopher said:


> install mouse guards.... first big snow we had allowed a mice into the upper entrances of a couple of my nucs....



Good point; a lot of people seem to think mice cant climb or jump.


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## IAmTheWaterbug (Jun 4, 2014)

canoemaker said:


> I took the same advice with packages last spring and ended up cooking nine of them on an unseasonably, and unexpectedly, warm day. I'm still haunted from the vision of all those dead bees.


I did something very similar, and I'm similarly haunted. I'm fortunate that the hive seems to have pulled through (with the help of a new Kona queen [$25 plus $25 shipping]).


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## dsegrest (May 15, 2014)

Coulda..woulda...shouda.

I could have put more supers on sooner and gotten more honey.


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## JonnyBeeGood (Aug 2, 2012)

Failed to make sugar cakes for winter feeding... 
This year I've got them made and on all hives as a precaution.


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## angel (Jul 23, 2013)

Ate too much honey, 10lb weight gain ensued.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

angel said:


> Ate too much honey,


Impossible. You failed to move after you ate it.


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## Hiwire (Oct 19, 2014)

Certainly my worst potential mistake was walking accross the bee yard with a super in my hands and a hive tool in one of those hands. I stepped on a tall weed with one foot, then hooked my toe under the weed being held down. I fell forward without my hands to break my fall. My forhead wend straight to the ground. The super went in to my ribs. I layed there a couple seconds and figured that once I got the super put on the hive and closed back up, I would find a knot on my forhead. Turns out that the biggest problem was one I didnt even feel in the fall. My hive tool had hit me just below the eye. Blood was covering my whole eye. I closed the other eye and could still see so I knew I didnt poke the eye out but there was a lot of blood. My wife freaked out and took me directly to the emergency room. It turns out that the bone of the eye socket kept the hive tool from cutting in to the eye itself. It didnt even need stitches. The ER dr said another half inch and they would be calling me Patches. From now on the hive tool goes in my back pocket and I pay more attention to where my feet go!
Ray


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## Hiwire (Oct 19, 2014)

I wasnt standing on my head at the time...but you get the idea
Ray


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

You win, Hiwire. That picture makes me cringe. There are times I've wondered why wearing safety glasses hasn't become more "mainstream". I always wear them while mowing and weedwhacking. My dad's friend hit a barbwire fence with a weedwhacker, broke one of the barbs off, and sent it right through his eye and pretty much lost vision in it. 

Glad you made it through relatively unscathed!


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

Very scary, Hiwire, even upside down.

I just had my annual slip on the ice so don't feel alone. Thank goodness bodies are fairly good at healing.


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

Hiwire said:


> View attachment 15312


Hey, I've got a cut in my tractor seat just that same shape! I wonder how it got there?inch:
Even in your back pocket it isn't safe, I'm sorry to say.


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

Of the many worst mistakes of 2014 they all have the root of "rushing things".


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

It is great that we share these mishaps because the mind doesn't think of them until after they happen.


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

Acebird said:


> It is great that we share these mishaps because the mind doesn't think of them until after they happen.


Don't I know that! You'd think Id remember!


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Lauri said:


> Hey, I've got a cut in my tractor seat just that same shape! I wonder how it got there?inch:
> Even in your back pocket it isn't safe, I'm sorry to say.


I'll take damage to a tractor seat/my rear end any day of the week over loosing an eye.

If I had to choose that is.


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