While waiting for it to get dark enough that the birds go inside because of a storm or dusk, I'm reading about extracting honey. Which we probably won't do this year; the girls (yes, all girls*) need what's there to eat over the winter.
We went out to see if they've done anything in the honey super we put on a few weeks ago. Eh, no, not really. I was wondering if they were "robbing" what was left in the partial comb to take down to the brood chamber. There were a lot of bees on those frames, but the frames looked pretty much the same as they did when we put them in.
We bought a used hive, so several of the frames had some/a lot of drawn comb on them already. I could smell the honey that remained. Bees will clean it out and move the honey to where it's needed, down in the brood box.
We are just about to have a major bloom of goldenrod. Bees love goldenrod, and now, so do I. I hope
they use it to fill up that honey super!
*The male bees, the drones, do nothing other than pass on their genes. The workers, who are exclusively female, feed them, groom them, clean up after them. (Guys, want to be a drone bee in your next life?
)The drones only exist to mate with a queen bee. If they are successful, they die. (Guys, you don't want really want to be a drone bee.) If they aren't successful, they return to the hive. They get thrown out of the hive in the fall and die.
