Happy Harvest Blog
The bees are thriving
H.W. has been watching them every day, and reporting that the bees HATE the "door" (the entrance limiting stick). We've been having warm days, and the inbound flights start bottlenecking at the entrance mid-morning. Then he pulls out the stick and "the bees BOIL out!". It takes a few minutes to rebalance, like traffic after an accident is cleared. Then the bees come shooting in and out like a time lapse video of La Guardia at 16x
Pollen baskets!
Today I had my face quite close watching a sodden bee (who could at first only wave one antenna to let me know she lived), pull herself back inside when a small black flying insect landed on the bee porch for a rest- just a little gnat.
...with songs they have sung, for 1000 years
My bees are alive!(with the sound of buzz-ing)We had an extreme cold snap (relative, very relative) here with a -20C night. I didn't think they'd made it. I kind of had a feeling. I'm really on the fence whether this hive will make it through their first winter. Neither death nor survival will surprise me.
Insulating the hive
As I worked, a few sentry bees came rocketing out, angry. It was cold though, so these were suicide missions. They would come out, buzz around angrily, then land on something, and be too cold to get back into the hive. I picked one still bee body up off where it was clinging to a branch and placed it on the upper hive doorstep. Within a second, pffft! The bees threw the body back out. I guess that one was dead. I put another motionless bee on the doorstep. They pulled it into the hive! Maybe for a little bee cpr.
Bee sculpture
Thing is, the bees have not recycled all the wax. The rest of it, they have made into sculpture. They aren't using this comb for anything, and it's intricately molded and shaped - changed to resemble some fantastic art-deco architecture. Amazing!
Two Bee Stings
Two bee stings in three days. That's about average for a summer. I can be done now.(Not my honeybees. Bumblebee and some wild bee that helped me discover their underground hive in the field.)
First Hive Opening
Every frame I pulled out, honey. Honey. More honey. Where is the brood? We saw a queen, so she is alive, but I'm not sure about well.
Bees! Day 2
One bee led a crowd walk around up and around the front of the hive, and then they started using it like they’d always lived there. The airborne crowd dispersed.Until I reduced the entrance with a stick.
Instagram.
I may not make a blog post every day, but at least I Insta.
Bite size.
