think I made my bees very angry today. Im in Tasmania,.. I’m a newish flowhive beekeeper and I was getting my beehive ready for winter as it’s going to be very cold in the next couple of days. I took off the flowhive which was half full and left behind after cleaning it up the brood box and a complete super of honey and wrapped the hive. What happened next was interesting. It was clearly obvious The bees were not happy. After cleaning up I moved my trolley right round the back of my property ( 300 metres)and the bees were following me then I took my suit off and went inside. My husband called me and said look at the bees. They were all swarming around my trolley and my suit almost as they were, they were attacking it. Thank goodness I have a good suit three layers thick as the bees had been stinging through it. I presume the pheromones from the bees were all over the suit. When things calm down tomorrow I will wash it …any other observations from anybody else?
Hi @universalpuzzle I think this is your answer - please forgive me if I misunderstood what you explained, but it sounds like you took away the bees’ winter stores. Forage is probably dwindling or gone at this point, and the bees know that colder months of dearth are approaching and want to protect their means of survival. Late fall harvesting is dicey for this reason.
I’m not sure what you’d planned to do with the boxes on your trolley, but time is of the essence - leaving them exposed will attract bees from everywhere along with yours, and the honey will be robbed out in hours. I would encourage you to put the complete super back on the hive it came from, unless there’s a lot more honey there already. For the Flow super that you said was about half full, it’s best to harvest that and then leave the box on the hive for a day or two, with the inner cover sandwiched in between it and the brood box, to enable the bees to clean up and re-store the residue in the brood box. Then after that point you’d take away and store the now-empty super and QX for winter.
Hopefully this makes sense for your situation! 
Yes I did leave a complete honey super for them to eat. I only took the half filled flow hive that was on top of the super so they have plenty to eat. Giselle