Search This Blog

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

I Woke the Girls!

This morning I left for the farm at 5am to feed and check on the bees; Dad had told me that both feeders were empty.  I approached the hives just after sunrise and all was quiet...not a bee was buzzing around and not even a hive guard could be seen.  I removed the feeder bottles and decided to put my ear to the hives to listen to their buzz in the hive (I think it sounds really cool!).  However, I didn't hear a thing in either hive...not even a slight buzz.  Hmmmm?  Could they be asleep?  Did something happen since Friday evening when I was last up here?

I took the feeders back to the farm house and filled them with sugar water.  These half-gallon feeders will hold just under 2 pounds of sugar for a 1:1 sugar/water ratio.  So far I've fed them just under 28 pounds of sugar!  Wow! What a sweet tooth!

I went back out to the hives and put the first jar of sugar water in the feeder and immediately the bees started buzzing loudly.  Either I startled the bees and they began buzzing, or the sugar water is like a fresh battery for a video game!  I tried to carefully put the jar in the second feeder and POW! they woke up as well.  I pulled the tops off the hives to check their handy work and the West hive is going to town on the second super; the East hive is just working on two frames in the second super and those frames have been fused together by the bees' honeycomb.  I'm thinking I'm going to have to separate some frames next week for they'll attach all the frames and I'll have a mess on my hands!  I'll try to have new photos and video from that working visit.

No comments:

Post a Comment