Bees at 94º

Bees are picky about their hive temperature -- 94º. (If you're a Star Trek fan, you can see that the writers for that show did their research when they made up the borg hive cubes.) Anyway, when the hives get hot, the bees get busy cooling it down. When the sun hit our hives this morning, Adam said the bees went crazy -- clouding outside the hive and buzzing so loudly he could hear them over on the patio.

They did it again later. I took a picture of this hive. The bees exit the hive, sometimes fanning the opening with their wings. They stay out until the hive cools down.

You can see that the other two hives are okay for temperature. Adam decided to replace the t-shirt material he'd used in the top of each hive (to keep the saw dust from dropping into the hive), with burlap, which ventilates better. Before he put the burlap on, he noticed that there was a grapefruit-sized ball of bees, hanging on the bottom of the hive. After he'd put the burlap on, the ball of bees had already gone back into the hive:  temperature difficulties solved!

We have lots of bees. The queens are each laying about 2000 babies each day. Of course, lots of bees die each day too, but generally, we're making serious headway on increasing our hives.