Bee Movies...Har Har
We are getting a ton of strong thunderstorms in our neck of the woods. I'll check the weather map and as soon as we get suited up to check the hives, a storm begins to rumble from the west.
Today we made a mad dash to the hive but as soon as we opened the top of Olga, it began to pour down rain. We decided to let building bees draw out comb. I did take a couple of videos with the camera to give some audio and visual impressions of our hives.
Below is a 12 second video of bees entering the Kitty hive:
Below is a video of bees returning right before storm. It's about 30 seconds long. Right about second 13 you'll see one poor girl bounce off--not as smooth at landing as some of the others.
And finally is a video from a week and a half ago when Non Birding Bill was out with us. We had top open of the entrance reducers, so NBB is widening Olga's entrance. Right at the beginning you'll see a forager return with large baskets of pollen on her back legs.
Speaking of NBB, he has some photos up at his blog from when he was in high school in Ohio and from when I was in high school in Indiana. Would we have dated if we knew each other back then? Warning: there's some big hair in those photos.
Today we made a mad dash to the hive but as soon as we opened the top of Olga, it began to pour down rain. We decided to let building bees draw out comb. I did take a couple of videos with the camera to give some audio and visual impressions of our hives.
Below is a 12 second video of bees entering the Kitty hive:
Below is a video of bees returning right before storm. It's about 30 seconds long. Right about second 13 you'll see one poor girl bounce off--not as smooth at landing as some of the others.
And finally is a video from a week and a half ago when Non Birding Bill was out with us. We had top open of the entrance reducers, so NBB is widening Olga's entrance. Right at the beginning you'll see a forager return with large baskets of pollen on her back legs.
Speaking of NBB, he has some photos up at his blog from when he was in high school in Ohio and from when I was in high school in Indiana. Would we have dated if we knew each other back then? Warning: there's some big hair in those photos.
Labels: beekeeping, bees
posted by birdchick at 7:24 PM
3 Comments:
Great videos!!
I'm curious - in the first and second videos, the bees are entering an opening that looks like it is between two deeps - did you notch a queen excluder? Make a new insert? It actually looks like an entrance reducer, but it would have to extend to all sides of the box to work. If this is the only entrance, it will make it hard for the bees to land, hard to fan queen substance, hard to cool the colony and make life difficult for the mortuary bees.
I'm enjoying the site, as always, but the bees are really fun to see. Thanks!
beegirl
beegirl3@earthlink.net
Good Question!
That entrance the Kitty bees are using is kind of odd. That is actually supposed to be the "ceiling" of the hive and would normally be covered by the roof. At the moment we have that above the brood boxes to hold the pollen patty and nectar feeder. This weekend we will take away the nectar feeder and it will go back towards the top. the bees are using the other entrance at the bottom as well.
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