RE: post cute animals
07-08-2014, 04:11 AM
I took a video this time. The sound is a lot harsher than it is in person, which is strange; as a beekeeper, you learn to judge a hive's mood and health by sound, so it's disappointing I can't share that accurately.
Only some of the bees are hoovering now; I still don't know why. As you can see, even the ones still doing have gotten a lot less... organized about it, just sort of going wherever they feel like, whenever. The ones that aren't doing it are clumped up. Like, a lot. Interestingly, the group under the handle is actually hanging from the top of the handle: none of them are touching the wall of the hive except the three or four bees at the top, and there's no anchor at the bottom either. The pile at the hive's foot is three to four bees deep. I poked a stick in and they just moved enough to let it through and closed back over it, then did the same when I pulled it out. Bees are weird.
I have noticed a lot more propolis deposits on the front of the hive (that's those red-orange-brown splotches you can see here and there; it's a sealant and antifungal they make out of plant resins). That might be what they're doing with the hoovering; it's as good a guess as any. More interestingly, I would swear up and down that this afternoon I found a queen wandering around the piles of bees on the front of the hive, then going back inside. Then I found another one doing the same. I don't know if this is a new crop of queens, but that seems unlikely since the hive already swarmed once this year, but it's hard to mistake a drone for a queen and impossible to mistake a worker for one.
This colony is confusing and interesting. I'm going to see what they do tomorrow.
Only some of the bees are hoovering now; I still don't know why. As you can see, even the ones still doing have gotten a lot less... organized about it, just sort of going wherever they feel like, whenever. The ones that aren't doing it are clumped up. Like, a lot. Interestingly, the group under the handle is actually hanging from the top of the handle: none of them are touching the wall of the hive except the three or four bees at the top, and there's no anchor at the bottom either. The pile at the hive's foot is three to four bees deep. I poked a stick in and they just moved enough to let it through and closed back over it, then did the same when I pulled it out. Bees are weird.
I have noticed a lot more propolis deposits on the front of the hive (that's those red-orange-brown splotches you can see here and there; it's a sealant and antifungal they make out of plant resins). That might be what they're doing with the hoovering; it's as good a guess as any. More interestingly, I would swear up and down that this afternoon I found a queen wandering around the piles of bees on the front of the hive, then going back inside. Then I found another one doing the same. I don't know if this is a new crop of queens, but that seems unlikely since the hive already swarmed once this year, but it's hard to mistake a drone for a queen and impossible to mistake a worker for one.
This colony is confusing and interesting. I'm going to see what they do tomorrow.