Quick Saturday Special.

We've been blessed with the kind of glorious autumn mornings when the chilled air is rapidly warmed by sunshine and the low angle of the sun catches anything flying easily in it's rays. The apparently chaotic flight paths of the bees are endlessly fascinating to us and from our rooftop room we gain a wonderful overview of how the hive is coming to know the local landmarks.

It is now clear that we need to move the hive a little closer to the wall. It's almost 2 feet away so the bees do not have a clear exit pathway they amble around and head where they fancy so we plan to carefully edge their doorway closer to the brick wall. This has the additional benefit of keeping frost out. It also means that when they venture out on warmer winter days their so called "Cleansing Flights" basically hive wide lavatory trips, will  begin above head height and will not be directed over our neighbour's washing line.

Below is a picture of the kind of feeder we have in our hive. The plastic cone in the midle allows bees access to a moat of sugar syrup which a few bees at a time can sup from. The bees fly, walk and crawl up through the hole in the centre and, usually, patiently wait their turn to drink their fill of the sugar syrup.

This evening when we went out to feed the bees they were more frenzied than usual. This may have been because we were later than usual. Sadly as we carefully poured the sugar syrup into the feeder some of the bees at the edge of the water became submerged in the sugar syrup and couldn't get out because the press of bees above them couldn't move out of the way. I do not fool myself they died happy so I shall be careful both to make sure we feed them earlier in the evening and that I pour in the syrup more carefully.

The other unusually macabre sight we saw was a strange tug of war between a number of bees removing the damaged corpse of another bee from the hive. It was strangely white as though it had pupated from it's own skin. One group of bees dragged it out then another bee tried to climb up the front of the hive and then suddenly dragged it back in again. 

We know bees carefully clear out their dead so they don't bring disease into the hive or taint the food supply. I need to check what this strange occurrence means.

Yours a slightly disturbed beekeeper

xxx