A Tiny Bit Of Bee Blogging

I was talking with Mr. Neil the other day about bee blogging. Periodically, I get emails from people asking "Hey, it's been awhile since you blogged bees, can we get another post please?" Or something to that effect. But since I've started working on the bee book in earnest, I've lost the desire to blog the bees. He could relate. The book is not a reprinting of the blog, some of the same stories will be there, but with more and different details and you just can't write a book the same way you write a blog--hyperlinking just does not translate.

I did have a minor bit of panic in the MimiKo hive recently. When we opened the roof, we found webbing in the corner. I worried that it may be wax moths. Wax moths lay eggs in gaps in your hive and when the larvae hatches, they crawl into your comb and eat the wax, making webs all over the place. Incidentally, if you have been purchasing the wax worms this summer for birds during the mealworm shortage--that's the same thing. Those buggers can really mess up a hive. However, if you have a strong, healthy colony, they can stop the moth larvae before they get too bad. I looked closely at the webbing and then suddenly realized that the small dots I thought was frass left from the larvae--were moving...with eight legs. These were baby spiders. Something else I don't care to have in the hive. I grabbed my handy dandy hive tool and evicted the spiders. I hated to do it, I respect what spiders do in the food chain, but I'd rather they didn't do it in the beehives.