July Flowers and Observations

We referred to a hand-out for The Kentucky Beekeeper's Calendar, which said the bees are much less active in July since the honey flow has slowed down. White clover bloomed all through the month...even still, the bees continually searched for water to cool the hive, and were willing to fly long distances to find it. They can add drops of water to a cell, and then use their wings as fans for cooling!

It's been a terribly hot and humid month, especially the last couple of weeks of July--a heat wave with temperatures pushing the upper 90 degrees. The humidity made the air particularly heavy and thick. We haven't checked inside the hives at all, the bees are stressed enough trying to survive! We've seen a whole lot of fanning on the flight decks of both hives, lots of flying to and fro (for water?!), and bearding on the outside of the hives to cool off, especially in the evenings. We tried placing water even nearer to the hives, but haven't yet seen them actually foraging it.

Our bee mentor has mentioned watching his bees racing through a sprinkler he set up in the yard. One morning, I adjusted the hose nozzle to a super-fine spray, knelt in the yard, and sprayed water upward, just to see what our bees would do. They LOVED it! Within a minute or so, I had bees flying through the spray, circling around, zig-zagging, and performing impressive and seemingly joyful acrobatics! They were a treat to watch...for several minutes there was play and cooling off, and when the spray ended, they were back to business-as-usual. Water from playtime accidently misted the hives, though maybe it was a happy accident--the bees began collecting the water droplets, and I hoped they were useful in some way.

We are amazed the bees can survive in this heat!!


In other news, we've been blessed with gorgeous flowers this season--zinnia, van gogh sunflowers, butterfly bushes, purple buttons, and more. Our bees have foraged on the purple bachelor's buttons and the wild white clover in the yard (we always leave patches for them when we mow)...and we were amazed to see a very wide variety of wild bees foraging on everything! Other visitors to the yard include gold finches, hummingbirds, butterflies, spiders, grasshoppers, humans, and dogs.


Erin has included some beautiful photos from our yard for this entry!

Second Honey Super Check

It's been quite some time since we've checked the bees or written. We've given them time to work during the honey flow without our disruptions. June was, overall, an ecstatically beautiful month! With the summer solstice at hand, the days became long enough for the foragers to fly 14-16 hours. I read the average life span of a honeybee during an active summer is 4-5 weeks. They literally work themselves to death, each colony collecting nectar and pollen from thousands of plants daily...and now it's already July!

We decided to give the honey supers another check on the morning of July 3rd. The weather was perfect, though on its way to becoming 95 degrees, so we opened the hives about 8:30am. The bees were already out and about and seemed to barely notice our presence, though we did use smoke and only opened the top super. Hive 2 had drawn out the comb of about 6 of the 10 frames, but there was no evidence of any honey or pollen on the comb. There were mostly baby bees exploring the area. Several corners in the comb had been chewed and probably used for capping brood and stores in the boxes below. Everyone looked busy, and we took the large number of young worker bees to be a good sign that the queen was healthy and still laying eggs.

Hive 1 had not drawn out any of the comb on any of the frames. Diana termed it the "Baby Bee Playroom." All the bees in the honey super were very young and seemed like they were just exploring the box and frames. Diana read somewhere that often new babies are given time to explore the hive before learning the rigours of worker bee life. The honey supers are apparently serving that purpose!

So, alas, we don't have honey to harvest this year. But we remind ourselves: we STILL have 2 full colonies of healthy bees, and hopefully they've produced enough honey for themselves to survive the winter! Our state apiarist wrote that a lot of folks are busy harvesting honey now and, generally, the area beekeepers have experienced a "fair to mediocre honey crop" this season. He ended the very informative newsletter with: "Keep those smokers lit and your bee veils on!"