Author name: James

Our Hive Smells Bad

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 […]

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Orientation Flights

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

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Kicking bees and wasps out

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.

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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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