No Bees yet.

Let's be careful out there.


We saw these guys at The Haunt for Lil Griffs 21 BDay. Twas Cool

Wild Honeybees... independent, not beholden to the man, living free the way of the ancients.

Tracking the ‘Murder Hornet’: A Deadly Pest Has Reached North America

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020...y=90&auto=webp

We're gonna need a bigger boat....

I did a hive inspection today. Lots of brood, wax being drawn, and honey being collected. They were super calm, very industrious, and no aggression at all.

When the combs are vertical how to they fill them with honey and seal it before the honey leaks out? :confused:

That's a good question... surface tension?

The row of cells in the left picture looks like they were filled and sealed on a slant.
Maybe when they spit the honey out it isn't liquid yet, more like the center in a chocolate covered cherry, then
after it's sealed up the chemistry makes it liquid.
The right hand picture shows cells not full but apparently not leaking... of course they wouldn't in this position.:smack:

I'm curious about the one that's sealed with a little hole in the middle.
Maybe like a water fountain or snack bar to give the girls energy

You're looking at a brood frame, a mix of open larvae and capped larvae. I didn't photograph any of the capped honey frames. The frame they're drawing wax on will be a honey frame.

OK, those two frames are brood frames, then they seal the eggs in the cells until they grow up?

You got it.

My beekeeping friend posted this after checking her hives the other day

Attachment 70519

Lil' Pete did a whole honeycomb series of design projects in college, bees be fascinating.

Honeyland

The viscosity of honey causes coiling...

Lost me after the first mention of the word tail. I then rapidly lost interest.

The coiling honey at the very beginning was awesome though.

If you want something sweet just lick the wall...

Attachment 70576

I wonder what the bees do about the ants?

Typically bees in a strong hive run a very clean operation. If their numbers are good they would clean up any spillage themselves. I'd say that wall hive has been disturbed.

Ants will sometimes try to colonize under the cover of a hive but they usually aren't an issue at all.

heh heh heh

So do the Borg. Is that a sign of goodness?

The difference between bees and the Borg is bees can give you hives [/double entendre].

(the Borg just assimilate you into one)

No problem. We will have a vaccine for that next month.

Ah, but the Borg possess a hive-mind.

ETA: Nevermind, I see what you did now. Maybe, a triple entendre?

Honeybee Queens tooting and quacking is communication with the workers.
Really, would I lie to you, listen.
When the new queens are ready to be released from their brood cells they quack.
The reigning queen toots as long as she is there.
When she takes off to start a new hive the tooting stops and the workers release a
quacking queen who immediately starts tooting to signal the workers to not release
another queen unless they want a death match.

Bees have conservative guard bees spoiling the fun, too.

One of my ladies working a milkweed.

Alcoholic honey?!

Doesn't the world need this?

I mean, damn.

BTW, ain't that mead?

Mexico has stingless bees. They don't make much honey but it sells for $0.20 cents a gram. :eyeball::eyeball:

Meliponini

Today's Earth Science Pic:
https://epod.usra.edu/blog/2020/07/c...orbiculae.html

And more from a neat bee page:

https://thehoneybeeconservancy.org/2...pollen-basket/

Honey harvested in different seasons, looks different, and tastes different.

The old saying is: A swarm in May is worth a load of hay; a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon; a swarm in July isn't worth a fly.

It looks like I caught a swarm yesterday, if so I'll need to get them built up for winter.

I always figured if I had the woodenware ready, why not grab the swarm? There's a chance they will do well. If not, no harm, no foul. 80% of wild swarms do not survive.

Absolutely, but I'm pretty sure they took off so problem solved.

You have the house, they decide if they want to live there or not.

nowhereman had the best honey I've ever tasted, and believe me, that's a sizeable amount. :haha:

I'll tell the girls their efforts were appreciated. Spun out about 140 pounds last weekend. Still have to design this year's labels and order bottles.

Nice haul! I feel like you're a lot more committed to this than me. :notworthy

We have clover honey here dark and delicious.

Sent from my moto g(7) supra using Tapatalk

A very strange bee...

We talked about that little guy/gal this week on the Damn Interesting Week podcast! (Past tense because it's already recorded, but it won't post online until Friday.) Bilateral gynandromorphism is when the traits split down the middle, mosaic gyndandromorphism is where they're all mixed up as they are here. But the yellow eyes are actually a completely separate mutation--this bee got two incredibly-rare hits in one! (Also, it's dead now.)

Work, work, work, it's enough to drive a gal to drink...

The first one is the poop on the self draining combs...



The second one is too long because he just loves watching the honey dribble. :rolleyes:
However this one is a few weeks after the first and he explains what the bees did to recover
from the first drain and refill the comb quickly without missing a beat.

I think this would be fun to do...

Neat. I bet they hit that hard.

I want to see them all cored out after the bees are done.

This is a new wrinkle...

Bees save TaTas... outstanding.

What else would you expect from the land of milk and honey?

Like it owes them money.