Honey Harvest...kind of

We made our first attempt at harvesting last night and it was one of the most stressful things I've ever done. From the moment we opened our first hive until we decided to call it quits 2 hours later we were swarmed with hundreds of angry bees trying desperately to kill us. At one point I was having difficulty seeing because there were so many on my veil. In that 2 hour span we inspected and cleaned only 2 1/2 hives and retrieved NO honey. I wasn't terribly surprised by this because of the sad state of our hives. I'll be thrilled to get ANY honey from this harvest. My main goal is to get the hives cleaned up and put back together like they should be - a simple task if empty, rather difficult if filled with thousands of African bees. Once we get the hives back in working order the bees can get down to business and start making honey. As excited as I am for this to happen, I'm not in a great hurry to get back out there and do battle with those little demons.