A Bee Mystery

As you may know, bees have disappeared all over the country. When beekeepers opened their hives this spring, most of their bees had simply vanished - there was no sign of sickness, no little corpses, nothing. CCD, or colony collapse disorder, is being studied by scientists, but noone has figured out yet what could be causing it.

Imagine how excited I was this morning when I saw this :

lots of bees clustered inside a butternut squash blossom at 10 in the morning, when all good little bees should be out foraging and collecting nectar !

None of the bees had pollen on their legs, which probably means that they they spent the night inside this blossom rather than in their hive. And why are they huddled together all alone, without a queen ?

I wonder if there could be a clue here to solve the mystery of CCD ?

Beekeeping adventures

I just completed a beekeeping shortcourse and despite the scorching temperatures, we worked outside in the apiary. Even the bees were hot ! Here they are, hanging outside the hive, trying to stay cool.

Some of us tried to stay cool by wearing only a bee bonnet, others suited up from head to toe.

I opted for bonnet and bare legs and didn't get stung, however, when the bees became annoyed by all our attentions, they started to buzz around and bumped into us rather hard as a warning , but no stinging.

Once the hive is opened, the frames can be inspected. If you look closely, you can see a queen cell at the upper left of the frame.

I am proud to report that I handled a frame for the first time with live bees crawling over the front and back. I was able to see eggs in the cells, as well as cells with larvae , which will be capped by the worker bees when they start to pupate and turn into an actual bee. The capped brood can be seen at the lower right of the frame.

Stay tuned for further adventures...