August 2020

Washboarding

Here’s your honey bee lesson for the day. This is something honey bees do and no one really knows why. It’s called “wash boarding”. The adolescent bees rock back and forth near the entrance of the hive. They don’t seem to be cleaning, guarding, socializing or anything else. Just rocking back and forth. I don’t […]

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Population boom

Looks like our colony has hit a population boom just in time for the fall nectar flow. Tons of bees out, some guarding, some gathering. The top box is now very heavy to lift as they’re filling it with honey for the winter. They’re also bringing in tons of pollen which you might be able

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Rescuing Bees

Our hive has hatched a lot of new bees lately! This is cool for a few reasons. The first is that it means that they’re thriving. If they have enough resources to lay eggs, then they’re not starving for food. The second is that we get to see a lot more activity. Here’s some slow-motion

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Bee-ing Born

Christina managed to capture a bee coming out of it’s brood cell, so we thought we might share that. Enjoy! For those who are curious, a worker bee takes about 21 days to go from an egg to coming out of the cell, ready to work. Drones (the males) take 24 days and queens take

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