This past weekend we saw some very warm temperatures (into the mid-60’s, ~18 celsius) and both hives were very active! Rob managed to capture some videos of some very interesting behavior at the hive entrance. If you look closely in both videos, you’ll notice a bee exiting one of the holes of the mouse guard (the white strip of metal), dragging a dead bee out. She’s on “undertaker” duty, performing the necessary task of removing the bodies of any bees
Fourth of July here has come and gone, and you know what that means around here? Temperatures are soaring! In the upper 90’s (that’s over 35 C for my family and friends back home), and we haven’t had much, if any rain for almost 2 weeks. The garden is wilting, the dog doesn’t want to spend much time out in the yard, and even the bees are feeling the heat. While they can “air condition” their hive by using evaporative
Early last week the entire southeastern US was hit with some pretty severe weather. We were woken up at 5:45 am on Tuesday by the University’s warning sirens, indicating a tornado warning was in effect. Not a nice way to be woken from a deep sleep! Fortunately, we didn’t get anything but some heavy rain, but further east in NC there were some tornadoes and golf ball size hail. The forecasted severe weather got us thinking about what we should do