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Saturday, March 23, 2013

Bees Were Out Today!

I went to the farm today to check on the bees' food status before the big winter storm tomorrow.  It was 50 degrees and beautiful today.  The hives all looked good, and I only added sugar to one hive.  One section of the yard had a strong buzzing sound, so I went to investigate.  I found tiny flowers around the yard and was able to snap this photo of a busy bee gathering nectar.  I do admit that I was surprised at the amount of nectar the bees have been able to collect and store away this spring.

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Bee Log Attempted Transfer

I checked on the log today and with the warm weather every bee in the area was robbing it!  I had Aaron's hive that died out but still had comb and honey in it, so I tried transferring the log to it.  Some bees I shook into the hive, the the others that were on the inside of the log, I decided to try sitting the log on top of the hive.  It's a long shot, but I figure that without a queen and a long winter they don't have much of a chance anyway.  Oh, I also found two emergency queen cells on a piece of comb in the log...unfortunately, there isn't a drone in a hundred miles!



UPDATE: On March 16th I checked on the bees and they were all dead...some in the log and others in the hive.

Friday, March 8, 2013

March Bee Call?!?!

Two days ago (March 6th) I received a bee call about a tree hive that needed removing.   A tree was cut down at Court 5 at Lake Sara, and about 20 feet up in the tree was a wild hive.  Of course, when the tree came crashing down, so did the bees' world!  I stopped by that night to survey the damage,but with light fading I decided to return the next day.  Thursday it looked like quite a few bees were present and it might be worth a try to put them in a hive with comb and honey that died out this winter.  So, today Aaron and I picked up the log and took it to the farm to see what happens.





Thursday, March 7, 2013

Little Half-Bee

When I stopped by the bee tree on Court 5, I grabbed some loose honey comb to enjoy at home, and I found a tag-along bee.  However, this bee was a bit unusual in that it's abdomen was gone!  It was still alive and walking around on the table, and I had some fun playing with for over an hour.  By then she wasn't doing well, and my playing with a dying bee was not sitting well with my wife, so I took care of her.  But I did take quite a few photos of her, and this one looks pretty good!