The Honey Factory

[OhZark Biddies]

I think my bees are slackers!

I noticed a lot of activity at the hive entrance but upon closer examination, it appears they are leaving the hive but not going more than 18 inches or so and coming right back in.

They reminded me of student pilots afraid to leave the traffic pattern. Maybe these are all new hatch.

I took these pictures:View attachment 2119199View attachment 2119200View attachment 2119201View attachment 2119202


Does anyone else see the problem?

Hint it is exactly 12 steps from the hive to this pear tree

do you see a bunch of them crawl up the front of the hive, and then take flight and kinda hover back and forth, or in a figure 8?

if so it’s the new foragers doing their “orientation flight” ... mine like to this around 2 in the afternoon

Here’s a video I found online

 

[duluthralphie]

do you see a bunch of them crawl up the front of the hive, and then take flight and kinda hover back and forth, or in a figure 8?

if so it’s the new foragers doing their “orientation flight” ... mine like to this around 2 in the afternoon

Here’s a video I found online

Cool video.. now can you find one to help teach my bees to visit my pear trees?

 

[OhZark Biddies]

Cool video.. now can you find one to help teach my bees to visit my pear trees?

show them this one, lol

 

[duluthralphie]

show them this one, lol

I will take it out to them for the morning pre-work planning session.

 

[karenerwin]

I think my bees are slackers!

I noticed a lot of activity at the hive entrance but upon closer examination, it appears they are leaving the hive but not going more than 18 inches or so and coming right back in.

They reminded me of student pilots afraid to leave the traffic pattern. Maybe these are all new hatch.

I took these pictures:View attachment 2119199View attachment 2119200View attachment 2119201View attachment 2119202


Does anyone else see the problem?

Hint it is exactly 12 steps from the hive to this pear tree

Heck I need to take these pictures out to show my TREES what they are supposed to look like!!

 

[karenerwin]

My bees will be ready for pick up on Thursday!! I am getting a 5 frame nuc as well. Wish me luck!

 

[duluthralphie]

My bees will be ready for pick up on Thursday!! I am getting a 5 frame nuc as well. Wish me luck!

Good luck..

My bees found the pear tree today. I was proud of the hard working girls.

 

[OhZark Biddies]

Not the best pic... just a snap shot from the phone... but this red bird is a ‘summer tanager’ and he and his lady friend have been eating bees all morning ....

Not a huge issue, but I ended up splitting the hive that swarmed twice, because I found queen cells in two of the boxes and figured why not... so I now have three hives here at the house... the original queen with her swarm, and two others that will raise new queens...

the new queens will need to fly off, do grownup bee stuff with one or more boy bees, and then fly back to their hives to take their bee throne...

I just hope they can make it past the red feathered dragon coming and going... if not I guess I’ll be buying a new queen or two

 

[Kusanar]

Not the best pic... just a snap shot from the phone... but this red bird is a ‘summer tanager’ and he and his lady friend have been eating bees all morning ....

Not a huge issue, but I ended up splitting the hive that swarmed twice, because I found queen cells in two of the boxes and figured why not... so I now have three hives here at the house... the original queen with her swarm, and two others that will raise new queens...

the new queens will need to fly off, do grownup bee stuff with one or more boy bees, and then fly back to their hives to take their bee throne...

I just hope they can make it past the red feathered dragon coming and going... if not I guess I’ll be buying a new queen or two
View attachment 2124026

How do you go about that? Catch the new baby queens and put them in a new hive? Do you put her in a cage so she has to stay put for a bit or will she just look around, say "this'll do", fly off and come back when ready?

 

[OhZark Biddies]

How do you go about that? Catch the new baby queens and put them in a new hive? Do you put her in a cage so she has to stay put for a bit or will she just look around, say "this'll do", fly off and come back when ready?

I’ll try not to flub this up too bad, but it’s more or less like this...

basically the hive understands it is queenless or soon to be queenless in the case of them preparing to swarm... and so they raise some new queen cells from eggs the queen has laid....

They feed the baby bees in those cells ‘royal jelly’ that has magic queen making ingredients, and they tell these babies they are better than other bees, and that other bees will be lucky to know them...

usually the first of these princesses to hatch then seeks out the other princesses and snuffs them out before they hatch, using a tire iron or other blunt instrument..

or if one or more has already hatched they fight it out like jealous sorority girls until only one is left buzzing...

then this princess bee leaves the hive and flies to a ‘drone congregation area’ and carouses with male bees called drones...

after a lot of crazy x-rated bee action, the queen has all the baby bee batter she needs for a lifetime of baby bee making and decides she’s tired of the party life...

So then she flys back home (hopefully) where the rest of the bees worship her and take care of her while she lays eggs and watches Oprah for the rest of here life...

there are a few variations of how this all happens based on events that can happen to a hive, etc.., but that’s the basic idea