Bee expertise needed

Actually...

the bees would be furious at any attempt to steal their honey. If your character has not lit a fire and smoked the hive the bees will just mob him and not the goats. You'd have to have the goats right under, beside or on top of the place where the hive is as your chap goes for the honey.

The goats will disappear smartly in all directions when the bees rush out. Your chap will be badly stung unless he can duck under water!

Though wild bees are generally quite peaceful, they won't let someone get that close to their hive. They warn large animals by flying into them. If the large animal is stupid enough to ignore the warnings and stick a hand in the direction of the hive... they're going to attack. They won't assume good intentions.

I doubt your character would even get to touch the hive before the first sting landed.

(It is possible the bees would threaten the goats too, but like pdr said... they'd scatter, leaving the human to take the worst of it).

On getting tricky . . .

I've been a beekeeper in Montana and Oregon since retiring from teaching. The following thumbnails of data may give you some ideas for your story.

Polenth is correct that European honeybees in the wild are usually quite peaceful. To arrange for your honey thief's goats the greatest chance of being stung, they should be dark-haired and shaggy.

Most beekeepers wear white or light colors because natural honey robbers are bears and natural bee-eaters are skunks -- both dark haired. Attacking workers become entangled in hair and after stinging, the mortally wounded bees secrete a pheromone to attract and enrage more workers.

PDR is also correct that the goats must be close to the hive -- perhaps tethered or otherwise prevented from fleeing. The more agitated the goats (perhaps blundering into the hollow log where the wild hive is housed) the more mercilessly the animals will be attacked.

I can tell you from experience, honeybees from African strains (bred to produce more honey) are the most aggressive, so your wild hive could be "Africanized." I worked with such bees from Texas and points south, and they attacked a black horse and rider in dark clothing merely crossing the flyway between a blossoming alfalfa field and the hives.

A technical point: Although most readers consider a swarm is any group of bees on the move, a "swarm" is an action where a large hive splits, and a queen leads a number of workers to a new location. At that time they have gorged themselves with honey and are the most docile.

To be in their best in delivering their worst (and to have a surplus of honey available to steal), the hive should be established a while after its swarm to a new hollow log.

Goats are pretty darn smart and agile, I must say, and I can't see them blundering into hives -- although it might be possible if it was a large enough herd and they couldn't get away from the bees for whatever reason.

Bees also have at least some color vision and are more likely to take an aggressive stance earlier rather than later with things that look or sound like their natural predators... Bears and Wasps. When people walking on two legs near a hive wear dark clothing, they resemble bears. That's part of why bee suits are white and not black. Goats don't look like bears. When people use lawnmowers and other motorized devices which can set up the same harmonics sometimes as wasps, that can tick them off too.

GeorgeK said:

Bees also have at least some color vision and are more likely to take an aggressive stance earlier rather than later with things that look or sound like their natural predators... Bears and Wasps . . . Goats don't look like bears.

Click to expand...

Excellent point about bee vision. Association researchers tell us honeybees have highly developed color vision to locate particular flowering plants. However, their multifaceted eyes cannot focus, so that objects even a few yards away are blurred. That's why some dark non-predators suffer attacks, and as explained in my earlier post, why we beekeepers traditionally wear white.



As already suggested, dark goats such as these pictured may draw hive ire -- particularly those with bearlike tree climbing abilities.