T Stands for What's the Buzz

Hi everyone. The heat and humidity has been on here in New Hampshire, and it does feel like summer. My gardens are blooming, and so far we've had a bit of rain to help the drought, hurrah.

Since it is Tuesday, this is my T day post. Be sure to stop by  Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog to see what people have been up to.

Last week my honey bees arrived, and I thought today I would share some beeautiful bee photos.

Hopefully this won't freak any of you out. I apologize in advance if any of you get the creepy crawlies. Next week I promise I won't do a T day post on the bees. 

The post office called me just after 7 AM telling me the bees had arrived. Some of you may not know how they ship bees (I didn't before I started learning about them). There are just a few dead ones on the bottom that didn't make it in shipping, but maybe you can see the triangular darker shape in the top middle. That is where most of the living bees are. 

My husband met me at the post office for this above photo. He is very curious, but a little afraid of bees. (Who knew that? I guess there are still things to learn after 32 1/2 years of marriage.) Actually he happened to be going by on his way to work as I arrived so he buzzed in and took a few photos. 

You can see the triangular mass of bees that needed to be put into the hive in this photo.

There would be  over 3000  bees in this mass. The queen is in her own little box in the middle of this swarm, and you can't see her.

I was home alone when I put them into the hive, and it was hard to get a photo of me all garbed up (minus gloves so I could take the photo), so I took a reflection of myself in the sliding door of my house. 

The only problem I had putting the bees in their new home was that the leather bee keeping gloves were a bit too bulky to open up the staples and other closures on the box of bees. I put on my gardening gloves, hoping they would help a bit.  There is a can (like canned food would come in) that is inserted into the package. Once you take that  can out the bees can fly out of the shipping box. 

I did get a sting in each hand when I pulled out this can and the first bees came out. Funny, one hand just got a tiny red bump for maybe an hour, similar to an unscratched mosquito bite bump. My other hand slowly swelled a bit. Nothing to worry over, it wasn't the whole hand but the area where the sting was. And that spot did swell. I guess the stinger must have been in under my skin more.  BUT the interesting thing was my hives (which have been a big issue as of late) disappeared for a couple of days once the swelling went away. I can't be sure it was the bee sting, but it was the only thing that changed, unless my allergy shots and meds just coincidentally decided to kick in at that moment.  I have heard bee venom can be healthy, but it does hurt, so I don't think I would want to keep getting stung. (And yes, I carry an epi-pen injector with me in case of severe allergic reaction, and I had it in my outfit pocket the whole time.) Here's a short online article about Bee venom in case you want to check it out.

After I dumped most of the bees into the hive, I left the box next to the hive so the others that didn't fall into the hive would fly out.  This they did, as you can see in the next photo. They should have all be bonded to the queen so I didn't worry that they would fly away.

The big hole on the top of the box is where the can I mentioned earlier came out.

You can also see my electric fence because as some of you are aware, there are bears in my area.  It wasn't turned on at this point.

You can also see the little concentrated sugar water for food behind the bees. I put this little one out for the bees that were not yet in the hive. I also have a large feeder on the top of the hive. The sugar  water looks brown because 1) it is a 1:1 sugar to water ratio and 2) I used organic unbleached sugar which is a bit more brown in color than the white super processed sugar you most often see.

Although this is not a human drink, it is a sweet bee cocktail , so this is my link to this week's T Day. .

Here's a couple of close ups of some worker bees. I kept trying to get some photos of the worker bees loaded with pollen, as there are some who are coming back with very yellow legs, but so far, no luck taking that photo.

 

I still find it interesting how bees figure out where to go to look for pollen when they are new to a hive and a new area. I read bees carry a positive charge on tiny sensitive hairs and that flowers have a negative charge that attracts them. I can't imagine that charge is so big however it would attract a bee several feet or even miles away. They also have a fantastic  sense of smell using their antennae. Bees see ultraviolet light so flowers look different to bees than they do to us. The center of the flower will be darker, attracting the bees to it.  I know once bees find a really good pollen source they do little dances ( called the waggle dance) to tell the others where to go get it.  If you are interested you can read about it here: Frank the Beeman, How Bees Find Food.

This past Saturday I went in to the hive to see if the queen was able to get out of her shipping box. The apiary I ordered my bees from told me to check after 3-5 days. My husband was brave and curious enough to walk down close to the hive. He took a couple of photos.

Everything looks good inside the hive. This photo was taken at only  4 days so I'm not surprised there wasn't a lot of activity on all of the frames yet, just busy bees.

The queen was not out of her box so I had to pop out the candy cork so she could be released.

I removed a screen from the box after the queen had been released.

My husband also got this fabulous (Ha-ha) shot of my backside as I worked on the hive. Can you tell I am pretty short from the photo? As I add more boxes to my hive I am going to need to bring my stepladder out.

Hope you enjoyed all the buzz about my bees. 

Have a great T day and thanks for visiting.