September 2020

Took a peak in the hive today. Tons of bees on the outside. And wall to wall bees on the inside. This is a look between the slats of the brood box (the bottom painted box), it’s like that for about 9 inches down, then 3 more shallower boxes on top about 4.5″ deep each. […]

This is pretty much all day every day lately. They’re pulling in goldenrod nectar and pollen which, unfortunately, makes the hive smell a bit like sweaty socks. It doesn’t have the usual nice smell of honey and beeswax at the moment. But apparently that’s normal and once the nectar becomes honey, it will taste perfectly

So, last week, we had some dead bees out on the landing board of the hive. What was odd was that they were not fully grown bees. It seems as though the nurse bees pulled still-growing bees out of their cells and out of the hive. I asked around the beekeeping community, and there were

I think there’s a heavy nectar flow somewhere that just bloomed. The bees are in and out like crazy. Usually there are a couple dozen hanging around the landing board. Not this morning. Other than a few guards, everyone is either taking off or bringing in resources – nectar and pollen mostly, though bees will

Christina got this video of one bee kicking out another bee. Not exactly sure what the reason is. Could be she was drunk/had fermented nectar (they don’t tolerate that), or that she was from another colony and wasn’t welcome (fear of robbing resources), or they felt she was in some other way damaged and unwanted.