The time had come. Colder weather, shorter days… winter is coming and the honeybees needed more substantial protection than what their hive alone could provide. Enter tar paper (above), saved from last year. You can tell by the grooves and the tiny hole that it had already been used for this purpose. That made putting … Read more
London has an interesting idea – Luxury Hotels for Bees. There are a few different designs. I like the one that looks like a Joseph Cornell box. Thanks Darren for sending me the link. .
. Last night was interesting…. someone had contacted the beekeepers association about a swarm of bees nesting in the siding of a house, so I went with a fellow beekeeper to check it out. The pic above is the hive entrance, but we couldn’t actually figure out where in the wall they were. So, they’re … Read more
Today I’ll be taking my observation hive to my daughter’s class! Should be fun. I took a sweet photo last night while checking them out (above). It was late and dark, and the hive was backlit by my back door light. Why late and dark? Because everybody’s home then. I need to lock them all … Read more
Here’s the main reason my bees have been so angry with me and humankind lately: all of the extra comb and brood in the picture above needed to be scraped off, so I could actually inspect the hive. The white grub-looking things are larvae: stage 2 in the life cycle of a bee. Before that, … Read more
I’m sorry to report that my bees have not been behaving themselves lately. The girls decided that Janine Grespan and her cameraman Kevin were a little too close to the hive – at more than 50 feet away! Angie was about to be interviewed for a special feature on organic farms when the bees came … Read more
My only real issue with this video is the stingers on the boy bees. You can’t have a stinger package and a *cough* male package. There’s not enough room. The girls get the stingers, the boys get the ability to genetically alter the next generation. Fair is fair I guess. In both scenarios, the bee … Read more
Here’s another reason why I thought the blue hive was dead: no dead bees on the outside. Bees are such tidy insects – they’ll haul out their dead so the hive is kept clean. No dead bees on the outside made me think they were all dead on the inside! Not the case, though, as … Read more
When I checked the bees on Sunday, many were carrying these ‘pollen packets’ on their hind legs. They actually stuff the pollen into the pouches on their hind legs and bring it home to feed the larvae. I saw pale yellow, dark yellow, and some shades of orange. They obviously have a few sources of … Read more
So here you can see the hive I fretted and worried over, thinking it was dead. Busy as can be! I’m so happy to have two good hives. Next trip out will be for cleaning, this one was just to check on them, take off the tar paper and move the straw bales out of … Read more