This is the story of a nice full hive of docile industrious New Zealand bees, left to pollinate a field.
Unfortunately the ground was not as firm and flat as it might have been and the bees collected so much extra weight of honey that the hive toppled over.

"Friday 13th July - I was wondering what would go wrong today. Got a call 4.40pm just as I was leaving Birmingham from Ian Beaty (who was sunning himself in Cornwall). The estate manager at Turvey had just phoned him to say that one of his hives on Grindstone Hill had fallen over. Obviously it would be a few days before he was home, so could Danny or I help? Always up for a challenge, so I gamely said yes, and got home as quickly as I could to collect my bee suite and smoker. Danny was somewhere on the golf course, so I set off to see what I was going to be able to do.
	Here is the hive, the top boxes nearest to you, the top boxes scattered and 15 frames vanished
Luckily the bees were a New Zealand strain, so were very placid. The hive was completely on its side, but the bees had arranged themselves so that any rain would run off their backs. First step was to re-seat the stand. Due to all the rain this summer the ground was extremely soft, so I poked around and found a relatively solid area. The stand had sunk in around 3 inches into the earth, and I expected from the number of supers that this would happen again.
	And this is the other end, with the floor lying apart from the brood box. However, the bees have formed a complete cover over the exposed brood frames.
	Closer view of those pale coloured bees protecting their brood
Inspection of the supers showed that they were all together in one lump, but I was never going to be able to lift that weight by myself - even the brood box on its own looked heavy. The brood box was set up as a brood and a half with queen excluder on top. I decided to separate the two boxes and move the main brood body first. I started by giving the floor a quick scrape clean, then lifted the brood box onto it, trying to roll it around a bit first to get the bees off the edges. Not too many squished, and then I took at good look inside. There were no apparent queen cells, but lots of brace comb where the hive had been over on its side. There was nothing for it but to cut out each frame and remove the brace comb one by one. As I went through I was pleased not to see any queen cells or cups - a good indication that the queen was still in residence. The super with queen excluder on was next - I didn't remove it as it looked as if those frames hadn't moved, and so there was very little brace comb to be removed.
	New comb built at right angles to the frames as the box lay on its side.
Next I moved to the top of the hive, cleared the lid, and lifted the top super onto it. You can see from the picture that there was at least a 5 inch gap of brace comb horizontal over the top, but underneath were about 5 'leaves' of brace comb built vertically in the gap. More cutting out and replacing frames needed! Once I'd cleared the first one, I repeated for the next two, and then could work back towards the bottom of the pile so that I could start replacing the supers back onto the brood box. Each super had brace comb in which needed to be cleared before the frames could hang back in properly. Once the last full super was on, I put the crown board on top, and then placed an empty super on that - into that went all the cut out brace comb - the picture shows about half of it. It was a real shame that I couldn't take it back home with me to use as cut comb, but I hadn't got a bee proof container with me, and I don't think it was ripe enough anyway. I decided the safest place away from wasps would be inside the top super and let Ian deal with the mess the following week.
	Some new brace comb had to be broken to re-assemble the hive.
Lastly, roof went on, and a final picture taken. I was extremely sticky at the end of it (and so was my camera, hive tool, smoker etc), but it was a real sense of achievement to have sorted the hive out by myself. I was also very pleased to report that I hadn't had a single sting in the hour it took me to sort the hive out - another benefit of the NZ Queens being so placid. Ian reported that at the end of the following week that the supers had been removed for extraction, and moved the hive to drier ground. No permanent damage appears to have been done to the bees or the hive, so I think it was very lucky that we were able to sort it out before the most recent deluges of rain. No sign was found of the missing frames of honey - at least 15 had gone. We think that badgers had stolen them, as they would also eat the wooden frames as wells as the honey and wax. They may have also pushed the hive over in the first place, but my view is that the ground was so soft, the hive just toppled over under the weight of the supers". Sue Lang
	Hive re-assembled but bees still working out why the world has turned through 90 degrees yet again !